Voting Machine Mess-up Du Jour (Displayed 11/14/04)

Broward County, Florida. November, 2004. ES&S.
Software reached its limit and counted backwards.

A software flaw cause Broward County officials to initially report an inaccurate outcome for Amendment 4.*

Amendment 4, which would allow Miami-Dade and Broward counties to hold a future election to decide if slot machines should be allowed at racetracks, was thought to be tied. But now that a computer glitch for machines counting absentee ballots has been exposed, it turns out the amendment passed.

"The software is not geared to count more than 32,000 votes in a precinct. So what happens when it gets to 32,000 is the software starts counting backward," said Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman.

That means that Amendment 4 passed in Broward County by more than 240,000 votes rather than the 166,000-vote margin reported Wednesday night.

* Broward Vote-Counting Blunder Changes Amendment Result News4Jax.com. November 4, 2004.

See: ES&S in the News

News stories make it rapidly apparent that
electronic voting is not reliable, accurate, or secure.
Any one who claims otherwise is either uninformed or deceptive.
~ Joseph Holder