brennan center for justice

appendix b : reports of voting system issuesBelow is a list of close to 200 reports of inaccurate vote tallies and other problems using votingsystems over the last few years. These reports come from news stories collected by Common Cause,Voters Unite, ACCURATE and the Brennan Center. News items about voting system troubles oftendo not include many details; this makes it hard to identify from these reports the precise cause of aparticular malfunction. Whatever the causes of a particular problem, it is fair to assume that theiroccurrence in one jurisdiction will often eventually be repeated in another unless election officialsthroughout the country are made aware of both the causes of the problem and how to avoid them. Acentral and national database, to which vendors were required to report, would be one way to ensurethat election officials had access to information they might need, so that they could ask voting systemvendors the right questions and take steps necessary to avoid repeating the kinds of problems listedbelow.Date Machine Type State Location/DescriptionFebruaryAlabama Lauderdale County, AL2008November2006November2002ES&SOptech III-PEagleES&SOptech III-PEagleES&SOptech III-PEagleAlabamaAlabamaThe Times Daily reported that there was an error invote tabulations for the 2008 presidential primaryrace at the Underwood-Petersville precincts. Thevoting machines in these precincts showed that sevenmore ballots were cast than were supported bydocumentation. 292Baldwin County, ALAccording to the Associated Press, an optical scannerused in the general election labeled an unopposedRepublican County Commissioner as a Democrat.The error only occurred when voters attempted tocast straight-ticket Republican ballots. Although theelection outcome was not affected, the errorremained undetected until Election Day had passedand observers noted that the candidate received anuncommonly low number of votes. 293Baldwin County, ALThe Birmingham News and the New York Timesreported that an error in the way officialsdownloaded vote data from a computer cartridge ledto an incorrect initial tally of votes in thegubernatorial election. The initial tally of the votesshowed that the Democratic incumbent had received19,070 votes in Baldwin County. A reexamination ofthe vote tallies showed that the incumbent receivedonly 12,736 votes, which gave the victory to hisRepublican challenger. The incumbent initially called46 | Brennan Center for Justice