Programming source of machine error  (KS)

KEVIN FLAHERTY   The Morning Sun   08 November 2008

PITTSBURG —

Crawford County Clerk Don Pyle told Crawford County Commissioners Friday morning about an error in reading votes that could affect the outcome of the already tight Crawford County Attorney’s race.
The error came from a programming glitch in the card that tells the machines what to do. In this specific case, the card didn’t ask a scanner used at Countryside Christian Church — affecting Pittsburg Ward Four, precincts one, two and six — to follow sequencing numbers on the bottom of the ballot.
According to state election law, each county must put out a variety of ballots that alters the order in which candidates are listed.
“It’s a fairness thing, because studies show that the person on top is more likely to get votes than the people at the bottom,” said Liz Hart, Crawford County director of election services.
To tell the difference between ballots, every ballot has a sequencing number at the bottom. On the ballots in question, the sequencing numbers were 15, 16 and 17. The error came when the card didn’t tell the scanner to read the difference between the three numbers; essentially, the scanner counted all three ballots as the number 15 ballot.
It became a problem because the candidates were listed in different orders on the three ballots. For instance, in the Crawford County attorney’s race on ballot 15, John Gutierrez is listed first, and Michael Gayoso Jr. second. But on ballots 16 and 17, Gayoso is the top name, with Gutierrez underneath.
With the error then, a vote for Gayoso on ballot 17 was counted for Gutierrez, and vice versa. But it wasn’t totally cut and dried — there were some races where the order of the votes on ballots 15 and 16 or 15 and 17 were the same.
“We really won’t know how many votes this affects until we’re finished with the testing,” Pyle said. “There would be some ballots that would be affected in some races, but not in others.”
Pyle said after the meeting that the glitch could affect four races — U.S. Representative District 2, State Representative District 3, State Senate District 13 and the Crawford County Attorney’s race — though three of those races aren’t tight enough for it to make a large difference. The Crawford County Attorney’s race was separated by just 70 votes on Election Day, with another 700 votes likely to be added through provisional ballots.
The error does not affect statewide races like those for U.S. President or U.S. Senate — the ballot order for those positions vary by county, as based on estimated voter turnout.
The error was discovered by errant precinct-by-precinct voter turnout numbers surfaced. Some precincts had turnouts well over the number of registered voters for that precinct, while others had a strikingly low turnout.
Representatives from both the Republican and Democratic parties attended, as did Gutierrez. Both sides, and commissioners, asked Pyle to explain the error and how he would move forward.
Crawford County Commissioner Ralph McGeorge said he appreciated Pyle’s thoroughness.
“I appreciate what everyone is going through,” Pyle said. “This is not an easy time for anybody. We think we have a handle on what the logic is in the programming. Now, we just need to test that.”
This is the first election that Crawford County officials attempted to program the ballots and the election equipment themselves. Hart said that training on the system didn’t alert county staff to the possible problems.
“We were led to believe that it was something that would happen automatically,” Hart said.
It’s a program that Pyle said several Kansas counties began in an attempt to keep election costs down.
“I still feel that this is the best option for Crawford County, and I know it will save our taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in just a couple of years,” Pyle said. “These types of errors could have also occurred with the use of outside programming firms, and I feel that performing our own programming keeps us from being at the end of the line when there are election deadlines to meet.”
The Crawford County Clerk’s office will hold a public testing of the equipment starting at 9 a.m. Saturday at the election equipment storage facility located at 405 E. McKay in Frontenac. He estimated the test would take two to three hours.
If the testing goes as planned and the glitch is caught, Pyle said he anticipates asking commissioners for a recount of the Countryside Christian Church ballots, along with advance ballots that went through the scanner, when they convene Monday to canvass the votes.
If the count only spans the one precinct, Pyle said his office could be finished in about a day.
“We want to make sure that we do everything right,” Pyle said. “Getting this corrected and making sure we are accurate is our number one priority.
“We want to get it right, so that we can make sure we do it right next time,” Pyle said.