Errors Add to Election Board's Concerns About November.
By Nikita Stewart and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 19, 2008
More than a week after the D.C. primary, the elections board has not fully explained what caused major errors in initial vote tallies, prompting D.C. Council member Mary Cheh to issue a subpoena for records from the California-based company that supplies the city with its voting equipment and software.
And an audit of four random precincts yesterday was troubling to voting advocates when the numbers still didn't add up.
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Initially, the board blamed a defective cartridge at Precinct 141, on U Street NW, which officials said added thousands of phantom write-in votes to multiple races. Murphy said yesterday that workers ran the same cartridges through the same program but arrived at three different results.
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By the end of the day, the employees had finished counting the ballots from three of the precincts and compared them with the results on tapes -- similar to cash register receipts -- produced Tuesday night.
None of them matched.
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