Voting Machine Mess-up

California. July, 2005. Diebold Secretary of State denies certification of TSx after 10% failure rate during testing. After testing 96 touch screen machines and finding a 10% error rate, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson rejected Diebold's application to certify the AccuVote TSx touch screen with AccuView printer module.*
	After possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting system, California has rejected Diebold's flagship electronic voting machine because of printer jams and screen freezes, sending local elections officials scrambling for other means of voting. "There was a failure rate of about 10 percent, and that's not good enough for the voters of California and not good enough for me," Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said. If the machines had been used in an election, the result could have been frustration for poll workers and long lines for thousands of voters, elections officials and voter advocates said Thursday. "We certainly can't take any kind of risk like that with this kind of device on California voters," McPherson said.
Kim Alexander, president of the Davis-based California Voter Foundation, said McPherson deserves credit for ordering rigorous testing.
	For years, voters have reported frozen screens and other glitches in the polling place. "It's always been the voters' word against election officials' and the vendors'," Alexander said. "Now we have real proof right before the eyes of state elections officials."

* E-voting machines rejected: State says Diebold failures in massive mock election could translate to problems at polls. Inside Bay Area. July 29, 2005. By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER. Archive

See: Diebold in the News

I have determined that
the AccuVote-TSX ballot station
with AccuView Printer Module,
as currently presented for certification,
is not suitable for the purpose for which it is intended.
~ Bruce McPherson