US voters have reported more than 1,100 separate
incidents of problems with electronic voting machines and other
voting technologies.
In more than 30 reported cases, when voters reviewed their
choices before finalising them, an electronic voting machine
indicated they had voted for a different candidate.
E-voting backers called the number of reported problems minor in
the context of almost 50 million US voters projected to use
e-voting machines.
In a majority of cases where machines allegedly recorded a wrong
vote, votes were taken away from Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry, or a Democratic candidate in another race, and given to
Republican President George Bush or another Republican candidate,
said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF).
In all the cases of misrecorded votes reported to
Voteprotect.org, the voters were able to change their votes back to
the candidates they wanted before casting the final ballot, Cohn
said. But in some cases, voters had to correct their ballots
multiple times, and in other cases, voters may not have noticed
that their votes were miscast, Cohn said.
The reports of misvoting happened on a variety of brands of
e-voting machines, Cohn said. In some cases, e-voting machines may
have misread voter intentions when the voter accidentally brushed
the computer touch screen, she said.
The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA),
representing e-voting machine suppliers, called the number of
reported e-voting problems insignificant compared to the millions
of voters using the systems during the election.
Unlike with some other voting systems, such as paper ballots,
voters using e-voting machines were able to catch misvotes before
casting their ballots, said Bob Cohen, senior vice-president at
ITAA.
"The machines helped them catch the error," Cohen said in
response to the reports. "With other forms of equipment, that
probably can't happen. It's a great credit to the technology."
Most complaints during the election referred to long lines and
other problems not related to e-voting technology, Cohen added.
Most reports "have very little to do with the performance of the
voting machines themselves", he said.
Among the problems reported were e-voting machines not working
in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, which caused polls to open several
hours late, said the EFF's Cohn.
The EFF and other groups filed a lawsuit in Louisiana to keep
the polls there open later, she said.
Multiple telephone calls to the Orleans Parish Board of
Elections were not answered, and the telephone line to the
Louisiana Secretary of State's Office was busy.
Elsewhere, 21 ES&S iVotronic machines in Broward County,
Florida, failed during the day, said Gisela Salas, deputy
supervisor of elections for the county, which was at the centre of
a presidential election controversy in 2000.
However, the county had 5,283 iVotronic machines in place, and
the county was prepared for a small number of malfunctions, Salas
said. The votes on the malfunctioning machines were recovered, she
added.
Doherty and other e-voting critics watching the growing number
of incidents suggested that only a small fraction of voters with
problems reported them to Voteprotect.org. It may be a number of
days before e-voting critics know the extent of the problems, said
Ed Felten, a Princeton University computer science professor.
Voters may not know for days about problems such as voting
machine numbers not matching the number of voters counted at a
precinct, Felten said. E-voting critics may file open-records
requests after the election to look for those types of problems,
Cohn said.
Grant Gross writes for IDG News Service