Voting Machine Mess-up Du Jour (Displayed 12/29/04)

Franklin County, Ohio. November, 2004. Danaher.
Phantom votes appear in the presidential totals.

Bush received 4,258 votes and Kerry received 260 in a precinct with only 638 voters.

Matthew Damschroder [director of the Franklin County Board of Elections] said he received some calls Thursday from people who saw the error when reading the list of poll results on the election board's Web site. He said the error would have been discovered when the official canvass for the election is performed later this month.

Damschroder said after Precinct 1B closed, a cartridge from one of three voting machines at the polling place generated a faulty number at a computerized reading station.

The reader also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race.

Damschroder said the cartridge was retested Thursday and there were no problems. He couldn't explain why the computer reader malfunctioned.

* Computer error at voting machine gives Bush 3,893 extra votes. Akron Beacon Journal. November 5, 2004. Associated Press

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