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Florida Election Update
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Election Incidents Project UpdateSystemic E-Voting Problems, No Fraud Yet Detected
[Update as of 8:00am Pacific on November 8, 2004]
Lots of people have been asking Verified Voting Foundation what happened with the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) project run through Election Day and what we have discovered about any problems with the election.
"Although we received no reports substantiating e-voting machine fraud or tampering, we received many e-voting incident reports, indicating systemic problems with a wide variety of machines in various locations nationwide," commented Verified Voting Foundation Executive Director Will Doherty.
More below the fold...
EIRS is the web-based tool that the Election Protection Coalition member organizations used to enter incident reports from calls made to the Election Protection Hotline at +1 866 OUR-VOTE.
"To me, the most amazing part of this year's election protection efforts was the excitement generated by the more than 25,000 volunteers -- lawyers, technologists, students, data-entry and call center staff--as they felt the impact of their efforts in responding to problems in real time on Election Day," said Verified Voting Foundation Nationwide Coordinator Pamela Smith.
The Hotline
The Election Protection Hotline received 175,213 calls of which 46,219 used the automated polling place locator provided by the phone system. On Election Day itself, the Hotline received 87,841 calls of which 23,957 used the polling place locator.
States receiving the most Hotline calls were:
- Florida (16475)
- New York (15395)
- California (15359)
- Ohio (14974)
- Pennsylvania (14062)
- Texas (7375)
- Michigan (6306)
- Georgia (6134)
- Illinois (5339)
- New Jersey (4857)
Counties receiving the most Hotline calls were:
- Los Angeles, CA (6080)
- Philadelphia, PA (4501)
- Cuyahoga, OH (4293)
- Broward, FL (4246)
- New York, NY (3841)
- Cook, IL (3771)
- Wayne, MI (3367)
- Allegheny, PA (3254)
- Kings, NY (3132)
- Franklin, OH (3096)
In addition to 1,000+ Hotline volunteers receiving these calls, some 25,000 legal volunteers were deployed in local (40) and regional centers (23), and on the ground in key areas to assist voters and resolve Election Day problems as quickly as possible.
In some cases volunteers entered reports into the system as they were called in, while in others, volunteers took reports down on paper and subsequently entered the reports online into EIRS. The latter reports are still gradually appearing in the system.
Incident Reports
As of 7:00 am Pacific on Monday, November 8, we have 30,211 incidents recorded in EIRS, of which 1,500 are listed as a "Machine Problem". Our initial estimate is that 80% or more of the machine problems are e-voting touchscreen machine problems for approximately 1,200 e-voting problems reported nationwide.
On Election Day itself, we have 20,192 incidents recorded in EIRS, of which 1,380 are listed as "Machine Problem." That means an initial estimate of approximately 1,103 e-voting touchscreen machine problems reported nationwide on Election Day.
States reporting the most incident reports were:
- Pennsylvania (3633)
- Florida (3500)
- California (2635)
- Ohio (2406)
- New York (2378)
- Texas (2251)
- New Jersey (1455)
- Illinois (1370)
- Arizona (1110)
- Colorado (1083)
On Election Day, the same states reported the most incidents:
- Pennsylvania (2353)
- Florida (1784)
- New York (1779)
- Ohio (1658)
- California (1625)
- Texas (1528)
- Illinois (980)
- New Jersey (973)
- Arizona (913)
- Colorado (753)
Machine Problem Reports
States reporting the most Machine Problem incident reports were:
- Florida (216)
- Pennsylvania (207)
- New York (178)
- Ohio (164)
- California (102)
- Illinois (79)
- Texas (75)
- Louisiana (55)
- New Jersey (54)
- New Mexico (47)
On Election Day, the same states reported the most Machine Problem incidents:
- Pennsylvania (207)
- New York (178)
- Florida (164)
- Ohio (162)
- California (95)
- Illinois (79)
- Louisiana (54)
- New Jersey (52)
- Texas (51)
- New Mexico (42)
In a later report, we will publish state data adjusted for state population.
E-Voting Problems
A preliminary review of the data has revealed many serious problems with e-voting machines across many e-voting machine makes and models as well as locations.
The e-voting problems reported include:
- Misrecording of votes (most likely caused by touchscreen calibration errors)
- Wrong ballots
- Votecard timeouts
- Blank or dark screens
- Power problems
- Missing machines
- Total breakdowns causing late openings, long lines, and/or turning away voters
Problem hotspots included the following locations:
- Broward, Miami, Orange, Palm Beach, Pinellas, and Sarasota counties in Florida
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- Bernalillo county in New Mexico
- Mahoning and Franklin counties in Ohio
- Mercer and Philadelphia counties in Pennsylvania
No Fraud Yet Detected
However, we have not so far seen any substantiated reports
of e-voting fraud or tampering. Understandably, incidents
of fraud or tampering are likely the most difficult to
detect.
Continuing Research
We are continuing our analysis of the election incident reports we have received to determine if any of the problems with the e-voting machines could potentially impact election results. We have not seen any evidence that e-voting machine problems could impact the presidential election results, although it looks more possible that state or local election results may have been affected by problems with e-voting machines.
Please stay tuned for further reports as we complete our research and analysis. If you have skills relevant to this research and analysis and are interested in assisting with the process, please contact the research team at eirhelp@verifiedvoting.org
For More Information
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EIRS incident database at:
http://voteprotect.org/epc/ (click on "Research/Maps")
More about Verified Voting Foundation and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility joint development of the EIRS:
http://verifiedvoting.org/eirs/
Election Protection Coalition member organizations:
http://www.electionprotection2004.org/coalition.htm