Voting Problems Raise Questions About Election Results

Writing yesterday about the strong performance by pro-environment candidates for state offices, I reported that incumbent N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Britt Cobb – a Democrat who had the backing of the Conservation Council of North Carolina – appeared to have a slight edge over Republican challenger Steve Troxler.

Well, scratch that. According to the latest figures from the N.C. Board of Elections, it now appears that Troxler is ahead of Cobb by about 9,500 votes.

However, problems with elections equipment are coming to light that cast doubt on the accuracy of vote counts in races around the state – and across the nation.

Here in North Carolina, a software snafu in Craven County’s electronic voting equipment is being blamed for a miscount that increased the number of votes for president by 11,283 more than the total number of votes cast, the New Bern Sun Journal reports. The problem involved equipment manufactured by Election Systems & Software Inc. (ES&S), a Nebraska-based company that has come under criticism in the past for product bugs.

In addition, more than 4,500 votes were lost in coastal North Carolina’s Carteret County due to equipment malfunctions, the Raleigh News & Observer reported yesterday. County officials discovered Tuesday that electronic voting machines had not recorded 4,532 votes cast in early voting.

Turns out UniLect Corp., the manufacturer of Carteret County’s e-voting system, gave incorrect information on how many votes the system could store, according to the Daily News of Jacksonville, N.C. The corporation said each storage unit – known as a “black box” – could handle 10,500 votes when the actual limit was 3,005. Consequently, Carteret County used only one unit during the early voting period, resulting in the loss of votes.

And in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County, a discrepancy was reported in the number of early votes cast, according to the Associated Press. Before the election, the county election office said 102,109 people voted early or returned valid absentee ballots, but unofficial results from election night showed 106,064 of those votes.

Problems with e-voting equipment were not limited to North Carolina. An error with an e-voting system in Ohio’s Franklin County gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes, the Columbus Dispatch reports. The county’s unofficial election results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to John Kerry’s 260 votes in one precinct where only 638 voters cast ballots.

And in Florida’s Broward County, attorneys scrutinizing a close vote on a ballot initiative noticed a problem with the ES&S software used to tabulate absentee ballots, according to the Miami Herald. Though the error reportedly affects only the count of absentee votes on countywide questions, it raises broader concerns about the soundness of the company’s equipment. ES&S is currently the world’s largest provider of election management products, with over 74,000 systems installed worldwide.

Bloggers and others outside the mainstream media are also raising questions about the odd fact that while exit polls were largely accurate in paper-ballot states, they were inaccurate in states with e-voting – and that some news organizations appear to have retroactively changed their exit polls to coincide with what the machines said.

Black Box Voting, a nonprofit watchdog group, says it believes electoral fraud took place Tuesday. “We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems,” the group says in a statement on its Web site. “What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud.”

The group is preparing to file a massive Freedom of Information Act request to obtain documentation to back up its charges. To that end, it is looking for citizen volunteers, as well as lawyers to enforce public records laws and computer security professionals willing to make public statements on the evidence found. It also needs cash to fund its efforts. For details, visit the group’s Web site.

In the meantime, let us ponder the wisdom of handing so much control over our elections to private corporations.