3rd bug found in Pierce County Instant Runoff Voting System

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By ncvoter (about the author) Page 3 of 3 page(s)

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"McCarthy said that while her office had tested the software previously, it did not test it with anywhere near the volume of ballots processed Tuesday. She said Pierce County is one of the first to use the software, so the problem could not have been foreseen."

But it was foreseen. If you remember, after the May hearing, I asked about that very issue.

I emailed you: "On the drive home, I was thinking about Denver in 2006, and trying to anticipate what RCV processing problems might come up that could be prevented. I began wondering whether the Pierce County system had sufficient processing power, disk storage, RAM, and cache to successfully do the processing required for 400,000 RCV ballots. It has to be significantly more stressful on a system than processing traditional ballots."

You responded: "Second, regarding processing power - the county purchased a new server, and when we extrapolated the processing power needed to cover the RCV ballots - they have plenty of power.

The RCV algorithm itself takes very little power in the CPU world." I do hope the extrapolation wasn't entrusted solely to Sequoia. Their estimate for what would be needed in Denver fell quite short. VotersUnite is in a position where we can sometimes pass on information to election officials based on the experiences of others. With that in mind, what else was learned from the experience in Pierce County that might be useful for other jurisdictions introducing RCV in the future?

Thanks,

Ellen Theisen Co-Director www.VotersUnite.Org
-- John Gideon Co-Executive Director VotersUnite.Org www.votersunite.org

September 13, 2008 Pierce County Instant Runoff System has new bug, says Washington SOS - may affect San Francisco there is a very rare occurrence of a problem with the Rank Choice Voting results loading with Pierce County's provisionally certified software. ....Should this condition occur with the General Election, it would only affect the Ranked Choice Voting reduction algorithm...

Friday, June 27, 2008 Instant runoff forces Pierce County Washington to use uncertified voting systems ... As you can imagine, we objected to having a system certified when, in testing, it reported that there were "zero votes" to start, but actually had 56 votes already in its secret, unobservable "ballot box"!

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