May 15, 2006 at 09:37:59

E-VOTING TRAIN WRECK 2006: The Wheels Begin to Come Off

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By JGideon (about the author) Page 3 of 5 page(s)

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Another Primary Election Failure For ES&S West Virginia

This past Tuesday gave us two state primaries Nebraska and West Virginia. While Nebraska seemed to have a quiet and fairly problem free primary election West Virginia's was anything but error free or quiet. The same locomotive that steamrolled through Indiana and left destruction in it's wake showed-up in West Virginia during early voting and continued through canvassing.

As we reported in last week's "Train Wreck" Election Systems & Software (ES&S) has failed to provide voting machines, ballot programming or paper ballots to many of West Virginia's counties to support early voting. The primary was no better. A short list gives us just a few of the problems that have affected the voters in numerous counties:

Taylor County's votes could not be counted on election night because the main computer would not read tabulators from individual voting machines.

Upshur County's counter was in such bad shape that as of midnight the county was trying to get a similar machine from a neighboring county

Mineral County's optical scan ballot counter was producing skewed results

Ohio County could not count about 800 absentee votes because it was not given the equipment to do so.

Clay, Gilmer, Greenbrier, Putnam, McDowell and Webster all violated provisions of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 when they were not able provide any voting machines for their voters with disabilities.

Mercer County used paper ballots, but poll workers trained on the new automated voting machines, a person at the county clerk's office said. Numerous questions from confused workers slowed the counting process.

Mingo County's vote-counting machine broke at one point during the evening tally, delaying the count.

Berkeley County began counting paper ballots on their optical-scan machine only to find that incorrect software had been installed.

Last week we reported that Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper had filed a formal complaint with the Secretary of State's office after ES&S failed to appear at public testing for the machines. ES&S agreed to a request from Kanawha County elections officials that ES&S have a technician present during the final count of all votes. However, even with the knowledge that the county had previously filed a formal complaint ES&S pulled their technician after only a couple hours. When the technician left the system went down for a few hours until elections officials could find a solution themselves.

With all of the knowledge of failures on the part of ES&S Secretary of State Betty Ireland filed a formal complaint with the Election Assistance Commission on Wednesday. As reported by The State Journal Secretary Ireland had this to say:

""I am more than upset that or county clerks and their staffs and county commissions had to withstand stress and anxiety over the broken promises and delays ES&S put them through".

"And, Ireland says, now that the election is over, strategy talks about the problems with Election Systems and Software will begin...but, "We will not and cannot discuss publicly our legal strategy. As before, we continue to work with the Attorney General's Office to address our options".

"The state's selection committee chose ES&S because of its past service in the state and it's knowledge of West Virginia election deadlines and procedures. Ireland says, "Unfortunately, we now feel ES&S let West Virginia down"."

So much like their failure in Indiana, Oregon, California, and Arkansas ES&S has let down the voters of the state of West Virginia.

ES&S Re-Writes Their Contract With Tennessee But Forgets To Tell The State

Just this past Saturday the Tennessean reported that ES&S had decided that their contract with the state of Tennessee did not suit their plans so they changed the contract form language and added, without permission, "used equipment" language to their order form.

This means that counties in the state will now get iVotronic Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines that are being used in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday. This way ES&S can move these machines from one state to another like filling a hole by digging another hole. You never get rid of the hole.

The state has apparently decided that they will use this breach as a bargaining chip for a better price for maintenance and other fees that they can expect to pay for the whole life of the voting machines or until ES&S decides to walk-out on their contracts.

While the state may see a chance to get something from this unethical act by ES&S some of the counties are not too happy with the situation.

"Eddie Bryan, chairman of the Davidson County Election Commission, said he doesn't know why ES&S bid on Metro's business if it can't deliver the goods.

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John is the Executive Director of VotersUnite.Org

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Book Recommendations for "2006 Elections Voting"

Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2006
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