Voting Machine Critics Report Scattered Problems

WBAL-TV  November 23, 2004
ANNAPOLIS, Md. An organization that put more than 400 poll watchers in Maryland precincts on election day reported Tuesday that its volunteers found scattered problems with the state's electronic voting machines, including machines that crashed, incorrect ballots and touch screens that didn't work properly.

"There are many errors and inaccuracies ... that we were able to document," Linda Schade, a founder of TrueVoteMD, said.

Since the organization had poll watchers in only about 6 percent of precincts, the 201 machine-related problems they reported "really represent a small part of what probably happened that day," Schade said.

The group also reported 330 problems not related to voting machines, including voters who were turned away because they were not registered or did not vote because of long lines. Almost 2.4 million Marylanders voted this year.

TrueVoteMD presented its report and a series of recommendations for improving the administration of elections to the State Board of Elections.

Linda Lamone, state elections administrator, said there are problems with any voting system because "you've got people involved in running the election."

"By all accounts, we had a very successful election" with the Diebold AccuVote-TS machines, she said.

The most frequent problem cited by TrueVoteMD was machines that crashed, and Jillian Aldebron, a TrueVote member, questioned whether votes that were cast before the machines crashed were counted. Lamone said the votes are stored on the memory card and are counted.

Asked about the 16 complaints of incorrect or incomplete ballots, Lamone said that problem might have occurred in polling places with two precincts if judges coded voter cards for the wrong ballot.

The most serious potential problem was reported by Ruth Ziotowitz, who said six memory cards from machines in three Howard County precincts could not be read by an "accumulator" that counted votes election night and relayed them by modem to a central computer at the state election board. Ziotowitz said local election officials were advised by state officials to provide the incomplete tallies and were told that the votes on those cards would be included in the official count compiled at the state board in Annapolis.

Walter Maddox, elections technology specialist for the Howard County Board, said his records showed that all memory cards were counted. Betty Nordaas, the Howard County elections administrator, also said she was not aware of any problems with reading the memory cards.

Overall, the election went very well in Howard County, she said.

"We only had 10 machines that we had problems with. We were able to send out our technicians and repair eight of them on the spot," Nordaas said. Considering that the county has more than 1,000 machines, "that's a very, very low percentage rate. We were very pleased."

Schade said the biggest potential problem with the electronic machines, lack of a paper record of votes, still has not been addressed by the state. Her group will continue to press its lawsuit seeking to force the state to equip all electronic machines with printers before the 2006 elections.

Providing a voter-verifiable paper trail was at the top of a list of recommendations TrueVote delivered to the election board office after discussing its report at a news conference.

Asked if the board would consider implementing the suggestions, Lamone said, "we always look at recommendations."