Update 12/15/09. About 137 machines were outside calibration tolerance and had to be pulled from the election. Story

VotersUnite followed up with election director Steve Harsman to ask how the flaw was discovered. Harsman said that each valid ballot is accompanied by a unique barcode on the paper record, but three records had no barcode. Checking against the totals, they discovered that those without a barcode had been rejected, but "reject" was not printed on the record as it should have been.

Update 12/17/2008. The county decided to do an expanded audit. Workers matched electronic results with the machines' paper record. In Trotwood the machine showed 43 people voted, and the paper record showed 48. When the card was put back into its original machine, it re-synced and showed the votes, a procedure that would never occur during a typical count. Diebold (Premier) has no explanation. Story Archive

"A situation of this nature could impact any election. It may appear that every vote has been counted when cards indicate they are being properly uploaded, when in fact votes cast on a memory card(s) are not tabulated in the results." Story Story2 Archive2

Update 5/17/08. After investigating the problem, Premier claims that software used for counting votes conflicted with anti-virus software, and local elections officials did not understand error messages that happened as a result. They will not be able to correct the vote-counting flaw before November but will provide "special instructions" to administrators. Story Archive Premier/Diebold Anti-Virus Advisory

Update 8/6/08. After a state investigation found that the problem affected 11 counties (Belmont, Butler, Cuyahoga, Green, Guernsey, Henry, Jefferson, Lucas, Miami, Montgomery, and Stark), Secretary of State Brunner joined with four counties that had filed suit against Diebold ("Premier"). The suit claims 1. Breach of warranty; 2. Breach of contract; 3. Breach of contract for failing to conform to Ohio law; 4. Fraud in the inducement; and 5. Request for a determination of the rights of the parties (known as declaratory judgment). Press Release Story Archive
State Summary of the Testing
Premier/Diebold Advisory
Premier/Diebold letter to Brunner

When she voted on Nov. 6, Brunner said she was surprised to see a gray bar and the words "candidate withdrawn" where Democrat Jay Perez's name ought to have been. Her husband, voting on a nearby machine, told her, "Perez was on my ballot."

"This is a huge problem," Brunner said. "There is great concern that not every voter has the same ballot."

She launched a criminal investigation, which has already discovered that not all the machines were tested before the election and a function that tracks changes in the machines was purposely turned off. Story Archive

A reminder: A study commissioned by the same county to study the 2006 primary election records showed discrepancies -- in 72.5% of the vote centers -- between voter-verified paper totals and electronic records on the memory cards. Report review

Another article says, "The system went down twice Tuesday, each time for about a half-hour. After that, election officials decided to take the server down every forty-five minutes on their own, and then restart it ten minutes later." Story Archive