IN: ES&S System Can't Handle Complex Ballot - Hand Counts Ordered!

Hand counts needed in 2 school board races

Computers can't cope with complex voting rules

April 19, 2006

By Brendan O'Shaughnessy
brendan.oshaughnessy@indystar.com

Poll workers will have to hand-count ballots on May 2 in the Washington and Decatur township school board races after a test of voting machines revealed a programming problem Tuesday.

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The problem stems from the complexity of the voting rules in those two townships. Voters must choose a certain number of candidates within each district and a total number within the township.
The computer program can't handle the complexity of several variations within one list in case a voter fills in too many candidates.

"The software wasn't written to cover this situation," said Marion County Clerk Doris Anne Sadler. "It's pretty unusual."

Election officials have had a number of problems in preparing for next month's primary elections.
Marion County already has scrapped plans to use touch-screen machines for disabled voters because of software problems and the complexity of county ballots.

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http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060419/NEWS01/604190435/1006/NEWS01

/sarcasm

school board, if nowhere else.

in the past two years, in central Indiana, that it is not surprising that testing in advance is finding the problems, and that (due to public awareness?) there is contingency planning. I just wrote of this scenario elsewhere (planning to hand count, when the election officials realized that there was going to be a problem) - before I read this item. Thing is that in most areas - there isn't this sense of heightened awareness (as in coverage in the major paper and on most of the news channels and their websites) and thus there isn't a sense of public pressure/urgency to make contingency plans to ensure that folks votes' count.

By the way, a hoosier DUer is responsible for the coverage. A couple of years ago this Duer (mostly active in the Indiana forum) - called a local news station to report serious glitches that were experienced when voting. Whoever they spoke to thought it was interesting enough to follow up - and did several items at the time. Channel Eight didn't drop its interest and continued to cover numerous stories to the point where there is now a lot of press scrutiny and nearly weekly coverage from all of the stations, and the Indy star about possible problems in the May 2 primary election. Prior to the call (I think it was for the 2004 primaries) - I don't recall a single story. The credit goes to the folks at Channell Eight for keeping it alive and following all sorts of different angles... but the kickoff credit goes, I believe, to a Duer.