Voting Machine Mess-up Du Jour (Displayed 07/21/04)

Dallas, Texas. November 1998, March 2000, May 2002. ES&S paperless and optical scan voting systems. Software errors cause problems with thousands of votes in election after election.
	[1998] In its maiden run almost two years ago, Dallas County's new $3.8 million computerized election system overlooked 41,000 votes, one of every eight cast. A software error made it think the votes had already been counted. [2000] Thirty elections later, in the March 14 primaries, the county released "final" totals that left out 11,000 votes. "The omission was caught and corrected immediately," [Michael Limas , chief operating officer at Election Systems & Software] said. "Realistically, within the context of election night reporting, this was in many ways a nonevent." *

[2002] The outcomes of at least 18 suburban Dallas County elections held Saturday remain unclear because of vote-counting problems.

About 5,000 of nearly 18,000 ballots cast during the early voting period in April on touch-screen electronic ballots have not been properly counted and assigned to candidates, said Toni Pippins-Poole, the county's assistant elections administrator.**

* Glitches in election-reporting system raise some eyebrows. Dallas Morning News. April 1, 2000. Darlean D. Spangenberger.

** Glitch affects 18 races; Problems in counting early votes could alter some election outcomes. Dallas Morning News. May 8, 2002. Ed Housewright.

See: ES&S in the News

We believe in the security, the reliability and the accuracy
of the touch-screen systems that we have, the DREs.
~ Ken Carbullido, Senior VP, ES&S