Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush (news - web sites) 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041105/ap_on_el_pr/voting_problems

Bush couldn't win without massive fraud. So he got his team to commit massive fraud

Below is the full text of a CNN website article on the same topic:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.

Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch.

State and county election officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for more details about the voting system and its vendor, and whether the error, if repeated elsewhere in Ohio, could have affected the outcome.
Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after acknowledging that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result
The Secretary of State's Office said Friday it could not revise Bush's total until the county reported the error.
The Ohio glitch is among a handful of computer troubles that have emerged since Tuesday's elections.
In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. And in San Francisco, a malfunction with custom voting software could delay efforts to declare the winners of four races for county supervisor.
In the Ohio precinct in question, the votes are recorded onto a cartridge. On one of the three machines at that precinct, a malfunction occurred in the recording process, Damschroder said. He could not explain how the malfunction occurred.
Damschroder said people who had seen poll results on the election board's Web site called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been discovered when the official count for the election is performed later this month, he said.
The reader also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race on the machine.
Workers checked the cartridge against memory banks in the voting machine and each showed that 115 people voted for Bush on that machine. With the other machines, the total for Bush in the precinct added up to 365 votes.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a glitch occurred with software designed for the city's new "ranked-choice voting," in which voters list their top three choices for municipal offices. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes outright, voters' second and third-place preferences are then distributed among candidates who weren't eliminated in the first round.
When the San Francisco Department of Elections tried a test run on Wednesday of the program that does the redistribution, some of the votes didn't get counted and skewed the results, director John Arntz said.
"All the information is there," Arntz said. "It's just not arriving the way it was supposed to."
A technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software, Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix the problem

well dad gum, that aint nothin~ just a little ol scratch...

let the trickling begin...

are nowhere to be found

I guess "equal opportunity" doesn't apply here. :eyes:

Hi All,

Like most here, I have anguished over the election and the possibility of election fraud. This is made more real, personally, since I observed the ES&S touchscreen machines err in Dallas, TX.

So, instead of using much of our valuable energy fighting for existing election machine changes, I suggest that we short circuit the problem by leading an effort to design and produce an Open Source voting system. This is easier than it sounds and can leverage the vast technical resources at DU and elsewhere. One has only to look at all the successful software developed for LINUX.

Using an Open Source model we can build an election system that is open and transparent to all scrutiny. The end-game would be the gift or sale of the technology to all counties, cities, and sates at no more than cost. If managed properly, we could undermine the existing corrupt e-voting companies and enable fairer voting by cash strapped governments. Eventually voters would demand their votes be counted on trustworthy equipment.

Since I have not the resources of a Soros, I can volunteer only time and skill. To that end, I now volunteer to coordinate this effort and look forward to hearing from all similarly motivated individuals. I also suggest that Skinner and company consider setting up some forum space which will enable the initial and continuing dialog on this effort.

Working together we can lick this problem and lick the Repubs at their own game.

Sincerely,

MHR

have worked with IFES, Cdn Foreign Affairs, and Elections Canada. Oversaw most of the technology used in the first SA democratic election (1994), reviewed election processes in Ghana, and more ...

Reporting for Duty
Iceburg

PS. Open source voting technology --- EXCELLENT IDEA

wonn't go for an open auditable system.

out of a pool of thousands of machines.

something like:

"ONE voting machine in OH gives Bush 4,000 extra votes"


If you feel that change is appropriate, that is. :hi:

Friends, Community Leaders, Journalists, and Elections experts,

The League of Pissed Off Voters and the Ohio Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE-OH) are calling for public hearings to investigate November 2nd voting irregularities and voter suppression in Ohio.

Local citizens are asking for statewide and national support to hold these hearings Friday 11/12 and Saturday 11/13 in Columbus, OH. We want to hear testimony from voters throughout the state who experienced or witnessed voter disenfranchisement, voter intimidation, or instances of systematic voter suppression. We hope to expose the systemic undermining of our democratic process and assess how to respond to racial disenfranchisement and suppression of voters. John Kerry may have conceded this election, but we will not concede our right to a fair and equitable democratic process.

This is a preliminary call for support to you and other leaders who can help make the first crucial steps happen.

What we are doing now: 1) Building a coalition that, we hope, will expand to national organizations such as the NAACP, MoveOn, and Election Protection Coalition; 2) Working to secure a room in the Ohio Statehouse or the Franklin County Board of Elections for next Friday and Saturday; 3) Raising money to bring in experts such as Lynn Landes ("In These Times"), Bev Harris (www.blackboxvoting.org), Greg Palast, and others; and 4) Getting announcements out to the community to gather those who can offer public testimony regarding their experiences at the polls.

What you can do: 1) Email or call us to let us know that you and/or your organization will be a part of the coalition to sponsor this public hearing, and that you'll spread the word through your networks; and 2) Contribute to the fund to bring in key speakers/experts for the public hearing, as well as to cover costs for reserving rooms, hiring stenographers to transcribe the hearings, etc.

Here are a few articles on the types of voter suppression/disenfranchisement that we are hoping to expose:

Kerry Won. Greg Palast, Tompaine.com
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php

Did Kerry Concede Too Soon? Bob Fitrakis, The Free Press
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/981

Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair? Institute for Public Accuracy
http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR110304.htm


In peace,

Amy Kaplan and Jonathan Meier
The League of Pissed Off Voters
amy@indyvoter.org
jmeier@mtso.edu

248-943-2335
614-405-2160

http://www.indyvoter.org/
http://www.caseohio.org/

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I can't start new threads so please help pass this on!

into the voting machine business. What the heck, we
can get creative too. Few votes added here a few votes
erased over there, its called the new Rove math.

was free?

races

I live in a blue state and we love voting in dem officials. However, weirdly enough, or current blue governor candidate is barely winning over the GOP guy. This wouldn't normally happen in WA. Christine Gregoire (the dem candidate) is extremely popular, because as WA Attorney General, she won huge settlements against Big Tobacco. Just doesn't make sense.

I believe King county (the largest one, over 1 mil. voters) is using electronic voting this year.

Makes one wonder ...

im surprised its being reported at all