brennan center for justice

September2002April 2002November2008October 2008ES&SM100ES&SiVotronic(M650Unity ElectionReportingManagementSystem used tocombine totals)PremierAccuVote TSR6PremierAccuVote TSR6FloridaFloridaGeorgiaGeorgiawas discovered the morning after Election Day.When the missing votes were added, voter turnoutfor the county was adjusted from 35% to 45%. 369Union County, FLBlack Box Voting reported that a programming errorin Union County, Florida caused machines to read2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirelyRepublican in the September 2002 election. Thevendor, ES&S, accepted responsibility for theprogramming error and paid for a hand recount. 370Miami-Dade County, FLAccording to the Miami Herald, the vote tallies fortwo city council races in Medley, Florida weremiscounted when the results of the absentee votesfrom optical scan machines were combined with theresults of the electronic ballots. The initial countshowed victories for two candidates who had actuallylost the election. The Miami-Dade electionssupervisor told the paper that all software had beentested before the election without a hitch, but pollworkers noticed the problem as they fed results intothe computers. Evidently, a technician from thevoting machine manufacturer inadvertently bumpedthe first candidate to the last position when heopened the ballot program on the memory cards tochange the heading of the ballot. When the results ofthe two systems were combined, they didn’t matchproperly. 371Fulton County, GAIn North Fulton County, according to the AtlantaJournal-Constitution, a group of voters had to voteusing provisional ballots because the election databasereported that they already voted; they had not. Also,in south Fulton County, all voting machines in aprecinct were down for about an hour. While themachines were down, the polling place ran out ofprinted ballots and paper provisional ballots. Anhour later, however, the machines began to workagain. 372Fulton and DeKalb Counties, GAThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that peoplein line to vote had to, at times, wait anywhere from45 minutes to 8 hours. The delay was caused byproblems with the computers used for check in. The64 | Brennan Center for Justice