State Motto:       "There are always glitches" - Deputy Director for Administration of the N.C. BOE  Johnnie McLean - November 4, 2004  Story National News:  Experts E-Voting Blog        Get the best and most up to date news at Voters Unite    Top National Experts on E-Voting blog about election problems -written by Adam Stubblefield, Aviel Rubin, Barbara Simons, Bruce Schneier, Dan Wallach, David Jefferson, David L. Dill, David Wagner, Edward W. Felten, and Joseph Lorenzo Hall. http://www.evoting-experts.com/  01/16/2005      Ballot design/machine malfunction suspected    NC     Burke County, NC. 1 out of 10 voters did not cast vote for president.                      10% Undervote overall, with 8% undervotes on paper ballots mailed in to the BOE.  "More than 8 percent of absentee voters who mailed in ballots in Burke also did not vote for president, Wright said."  This is from the News and Observer, in an article dated January 16, 2005. Story  *Did anyone visually inspect the mail in ballots?  11/26/2004        Editorial        NC       North Carolina's Ballot Blues - Our key decision-makers are ignoring the seriousness of the problem: "Except for the lost votes in Carteret County, Gary Bartlett, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, called the problems 'easily remedied and lessons learned.'" AP Newswire, Nov 13 North Carolina's election problems will not be that easily remedied. This year's disaster shows that many election workers are in over their heads. Story 11/22/2004 Call for probe   NC  A second issue for State Board of Elections to probe over Gaston County problems. Story (registration free) * get passwords to newsites at www.bugmenot.com   11/22/2004   11/13/2004 NC Elections 2004   Machine malfunction NC   NC North Carolina voting problems: 2004 edition Well done synopsis of trainwreck, goes too lightly on Guilford County's ignorance of limits of their 16 bit central tabulator that subtracted votes after count reached 32,767 Story Gaston County. About 12,000 votes cast in Gaston County have not yet been counted, elections director Sandra Page said Tuesday. Page said most early and absentee votes were not included in the county's unofficial election results because of a procedural error. The inclusion of the votes in the county's results, expected Tuesday afternoon, could change the outcome of several local and statewide races. Story1 Story2 Story3 Archive3 The county pays a technician from Diebold to operate its systems on Election Day. That person was in charge of transferring early votes from electronic storage to the counting computer. Diebold believes the transmission was interrupted, said spokesman David Bear. Story Archive 11/13/2004 Machine malfunction NC Gaston County. After data was transmitted from the precincts to the central station, it was discovered that there was no data for the Dallas precinct in the GEMS database. Office records from election night, kept by a staff member, showed that information was received, Gaston County Elections Director Sandra Page said. She believes the computer system recorded a successful transmission without receiving any data. Story Archive Gaston County Voting Equipment: Gaston has 340 Diebold AccuVote TS (touchscreen) NASED ID nr NO3060011717 aquired Jul-98 model 19rW-1990, programmed by Diebold. Central Tabulator is GEMS 1.17.17, installed in 2001. Has modem, does not use it. 11/10/2004 Machine malfunction NC In Guilford County, ES&S early voting machines had capacity problems, which affected anywhere from 6,000 to 20,000 ballots. Story Archive The totals were so large, the tabulation computer threw some numbers away. Retallying changed two outcomes and gave an additional 22000 votes to Kerry. Story Archive ES&S explained that the Unity 2.2 tally software reached 32,767 (32K) and began subtracting from the totals (same as in Broward County). ES&S had known about the problem but not told its customers. Guilford County BOE didn't know that its central tabulator could not add more than 32,767 votes? Why?      Letter from ES&S  explaining to Guilford County (603K) Guilford County Voting Machines - ES&S touchscreen voting machines, purchased 1,186 from 1995-2002, Votronic Model 1, Firmware 5.28, installed 2002, Tabulating Software Unity 2.2 installed 2003, programmed by Guilford County, has modem, doesn't use. 11/10/2004 User-unfriendly design NC Buncombe County. Workers in one precinct activated the wrong option switch on the Sequoia Advantage touch screen machines in the morning. They have estimated that as many as 75 voters were not given the opportunity to vote in the school board race. Story 11/9/2004 Machine malfunction NC Carteret County. More than 4,500 votes irretrievably lost in coastal Carteret County could trigger a new statewide election if the official margin of victory in two Council of State races is close enough, state election officials said Monday. Story Archive  Carteret voting machines Unilect Direct Record (DREs) purchased May 96, 45 machines, Programmed by Connecting Points 252-240-2722 Firmware: Unilect Patriot model 2.54, Software: Unilect, model/version Intetilect 2.49 has modem capability. Website for Unilect Corporation: http://www.unilect.com/  11/09/2004 Machine malfunction NC Craven County. Problems with Electronic Systems and Software Inc. iVotronic voting machines surfaced in one-stop early voting, requiring all screens to be replaced. Story 11/09/2004 Machine malfunction NC Craven County. "A master terminal at the Vanceboro one-stop voting site did not require a password and resulted in an incorrect total in the presidential returns there." ES&S again. Story Archive 11/09/2004 Provisional ballots NC Wake County (Raleigh). Reviewing and counting 15,000 may cause the county to miss the deadline for reporting totals. 75,000 ballots were cast statewide. Story 11/09/2004 Provisional ballots NC Elections officials approved 1,790 of Durham's 2,820 provisional ballots cast, or 63 percent. More than 1,000 ballots were rejected mainly because there was no record that the people had registered to vote. Story Archive 11/04/2004 Machine malfunction NC More than 4,500 Carteret County votes have been lost on a Unilect electronic voting machine. The vendor said it would hold 10,500 ballots. It would only hold 3,005 and 7,530 people cast their ballots on it. Story Archive 11/04/2004 Machine malfunction NC Mecklenburg County. Before the election, the county election office said 102,109 people voted early or returned valid absentee ballots. Unofficial results from election night showed 106,064 of those votes. Story Archive Machines mistallied. Mecklenburg County.  Early voting machines counted some totals twice affecting as many as 4,000 ballots. That problem has not yet been corrected. "There are always glitches," McLean said.  Story Early Voting Equipment: Owns 100 Microvote Carson Infinity, NASED ID nr 101302, aquired 2002, programmed by BOE staff, firmware 2.06, tabulating software MEMS 2.04 no modem capability.                General Election Voting Equipment:  Mecklenburg Voting Machines, Microvote 464, Purchased 1,400 in 1995 NASED nr 10301, Firmware version 4.31, Software - MEMS model/version 2.02 Programmed by Board of Elections, No modem capability service by Microvote, phone 317-257-4900 11/04/2004 Machine malfunction NC In Craven County, all vote totals in nine of the county's 26 precincts were electronically doubled,              increasing the totals for president by 11,283 more than the number of votes cast. Correcting the mistake changed the outcome of at least one race. ES&S Votronic machines used. Automatic warning of double-counting didn't work. Story Archive Craven County Voting Machines:  ES&S Votronic Model 1 Purchased 206 machines from 1997-2003, Firmware model 5.28 installed 2002 Software tabulator ES&S Unity version 2.2, Programmed by ES&S ess 800-247-8683, has modem, does not use it 11/04/2004 Machine malfunction NC In Onslow County, a software error changed the order of finish in the race for seats on the county commission. The error didn't change who won the seats, just the order in which they finished. A floppy disk that compiles voting data from the counting machines was programmed incorrectly. Story Archive Onslow County uses punch-card machines. They have 28, purchased them in 1985 from Business Records Corp. (now ES&S) and plan to replace them once federal standards are set. 11/04/2004 Machine malfunction NC In Yadkin County, about 1,000 ballots were accidentally counted twice. Story Archive Yadkin County Voting Machines - ES&S Optech 111 - P Eagle, Optical Scanners purchased 13 machines 1996, Firmware Optech III, Software, Data Packs programmed by ES&S 11/02/2004 Election law NC Voting a straight party ticket DOES NOT include a vote for president. This is by state law in North Carolina and South Carolina only. Voters must vote for a presidential candidate separately. Story 10/30/2004 Ballot secrecy violation NC North Carolina structured its early voting process with a retrievable ballot that is not counted until Election Day. So if election officials are notified that an early voter has died, that ballot can be removed. Story 10/27/2004 Voter challenges NC Both major parties in the Carolinas plan to have observers at polling places, making sure legal voters are not excluded and bogus voters don't sneak in. Some may challenge voters' eligibility, while others will be trying to block challenges. Story Archive 10/27/2004 Voter challenges NC In Alamance County, N.C., earlier this month, the sheriff submitted a list of registered voters with Spanish surnames to the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an attempt to determine whether or not they are U.S. citizens. Story Archive 10/21/2004 Machine malfunction NC Forsyth County. Kathy Cooper, director of elections, says problems with batteries dying on computers at early voting polls have already been resolved. Story: Early voting going briskly Archive One of the four machines at Reynolda Manor was not working early Tuesday afternoon, but it was soon fixed. Problems have mostly resulted from machines not being hooked up properly. Forsyth County used DREs leased from Advanced Voting Solutions, the WINVote, a machine with wireless internet access. 10/21/2004 Test failure NC Forsyth County. Precinct chair says his ballot was not tallied correctly during a demonstration of the e-voting machines at an early voting site. Story: Early voting going briskly Archive 10/15/2004 Machine malfunction NC Craven County. Voters' choices register incorrectly on the touch screen. The county official attempted to recalibrate the screens, but two machines had to be taken out of service. Story     10/13/2004        Election Monitors         NC Groups prepare to monitor voting. The Duke Chronicle -  Carolynn Carson, a senior data technician for Duke University Medical Center, has volunteered to be a poll monitor in the Raleigh-Durham area. “I feel that this should be in the news in the same way that a threatening hurricane is because I think it’s that serious, or more serious,” she said.  A North Carolina congressman and Duke professor is also working on the legislative front to ensure elections are conducted fairly. Rep. David Price, D-N.C., authored and sponsored the Count Every Vote Act of 2004, which would provide additional time for carrying out recounts in presidential elections, if necessary.  Story  09/29/2004 Tech Watch NC Greensboro a beta test says Jim Franz. Jim Franz, an independent iSeries consultant is one of more than 1,500 techies who've signed on with the Verified Voting Foundation to police electronic voting practices around the country. Franz signed on to the organization's TechWatch program, which will keep track of any issues that occur at electronic polling places around the country..."Our local elections official in Greensboro has been one of the leading proponents in the country of electronic voting," he says. "We feel like he's almost been a beta site for some of the manufacturers. We've been doing electronic voting for four or five years. Since the issue came up, he's taken a lot of hits for not having a secure system." Franz, who has a background in security and has worked on accounting programs for numerous iSeries customers, would like to see the same security, accountability, and audit capabilities built into voting systems as are built into business systems. Story 07/20/2004        Machine Malfunction    NC Mecklenburg County Problem: Around 9:40 PM Tuesday, officials with Vinroot's campaign claimed there were problems with the voting machines in Mecklenburg County.  But those problems were resolved quickly.WRAL  This problem in more detail from a yahoo group message board: "WRAL has reported that Vinroot's campaign has reported the Mecklenburg's "vote processing center" (don't know what to make of that neologism) is "broken". Whatever *that* means. Message Board   Mecklenburg uses the Microvote DRE. Also, see the NC VOTER page tab "Bribery" for more on these voting machines and their origion. 07/20/2004   Machine Malfunction NC  Pender County Problem:   All of Pender County votes electronically, and the county has 74 of these machines. But on Tuesday, one of them didn't work. "There was a machine that would not tally. We had the precinct workers bring in the machine for that and we had to extract those votes and count them manually," said Frances Pinion the Pender County Board of Elections Director. WWAYTV  Pender uses the Microvote Infinity DRE voting machines. 07/21/2004        Machine Malfunction    NC New Hanover County: election officials say it was a smooth day until they brought the results to the New Hanover County courthouse. "The server that the application runs on, that calculates the votes. I had a little problem with the server," said Jan Kavanaugh a programmer analyst with New Hanover County. http://www.wwaytv3.com/Global/story.asp?S=2071570 07/13/2004        Computer Ate My        Vote  NC New Bern Sun Journal write up on Computer Ate My Vote - NCBOE again claims no prob with DREs that NC currently uses.... Warren Murphy presented 10,531 petitions by NC Citizens who want a voter verified paper ballot.   Full Story ,   Rocky Mt. Telegram Cached:  Winston Salem Journal Full Story Channel 11 ABC   Full Story