Few reliable voting machines in Florida

Voting machines were at the heart of major irregularities during the elections for the position of a judge in Florida. Florida's reputation for reliable election results has suffered since the elections in 2000, when George W. Bush was elected president as a result of the controversial ballot counts in the state. Florida is one of the potentially decisive "swing states" in the presidential election on 4^th November.

More worrying are the problems currently reported from Palm Beach County, where voting machines supplied by Sequoia Voting Systems acted strangely during various ballot counts. In its latest publications, the US government still proudly reports improved voting machines in Florida, especially highlighting "optical scan machines" which use paper ballot cards instead of a touch screen. On the other hand, Wired magazine reports major irregularities in connection with model 400C voting machines by Sequoia Voting Systems in Palm Beach County.

The county held elections for a circuit judge on 26^th August in which the winner only gained a majority of 17 votes. Legal regulations in Florida require a recount of votes when the result is this close. During the recount a week later it became apparent that compared to the initial count, 3,478 ballot cards had gone missing. In addition, the opposition candidate gained a close majority of 60 votes in the ballot recount, making him the new election winner.

This was the beginning of a major series of ballot count examinations that found that every test examination yielded different results. The examinations were carried out both with voting machines and manually, as required by law in Florida in certain circumstances.

A particular problem during the tests were ballot cards which the high speed scanners apparently declared void but which were accepted as valid when re-evaluated by an examiner. As a result, the defeated candidate filed a complaint requesting a test of two of the Sequoia Voting Systems' model 400C machines. This test was carried out last Wednesday. Poll workers fed the machines with ballot cards which had been declared void on the election day.

Normally, these cards should have been rejected once again. However, this didn’t happen. As the Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported, the trial runs yielded different results every time. During the first count, they accepted three out of 160 ballot cards they had previously rejected. In further trials with an additional 102 ballot cards that should have been rejected the machines initially accepted 13 as valid, and in the second run they accepted 90 of them. According to a detailed test report by the defeated candidate's lawyer, the two machines also yielded different results from each other.

In tests conducted last Friday, though, the voting machines worked fine. However, this test didn't involve the model 400C but a different type of machines which, according to the lawyer, were given only ten ballot cards to process.

No further tests have been carried out – due to a lack of time, as the county is preparing for the November elections. Sequoia Voting Systems has not commented so far. Unlike the elections for a circuit judge, the presidential elections use not one but two ballot cards; in addition, the number of votes to count in November is expected to be more than 500,000 for the presidential election, rather than about 100,000 for the judge.

(lghp)