Few Glitches Reported in Early Fla. Voting
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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Voters began casting ballots Monday in the state synonymous with the election fiasco of 2000, but only a few glitches were reported on a day that marked the start of early voting in several states...
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The testing of the electronic voting machines in FloridaÃ¢ÂÂs disputed 13th Congressional District race is expected to conclude Friday night. State elections officials then will proceed with additional audit activities to determine whether voting machine errors affected the outcome Ã¢ÂÂ certified by state officials as a narrow 369-vote victory for the Republican nominee, car dealership owner Vern Buchanan.
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Early voters in the Sunshine State begin casting electronic ballots Monday, and it doesn't take long for the first problems to surface.
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A mistake by an election worker "lost" 245 electronic ballots cast in last month's Florida primary, but the mix-up didn't affect the outcome of any race when the votes were finally counted, authorities said.
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After a series of tests on e-voting machines, a U.S. government auditor still doesn&#39;t know what contributed to 18,000 unmarked ballots in a Florida congressional race in 2006.The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) checked the firmware and the ballot display and ran calibration tests on a sample of Election Systems &amp; Software (ES&amp;S) iVotronic e-voting machines, the agency said in a report released Friday. Those tests, combined with others done by the GAO and state of Florida, &quot;have significantly reduced the possibility that the iVotronic [machines] were the cause of the undervote,&quot; said the report, authored by Nabajyoti Barkakati, acting chief technologist for the GAO&#39;s applied research and methods division.The GAO believes the ES&amp;S machines have been adequately tested, the report says. &quot;Given the complex interaction of people, processes, and technology that must work effectively together to achieve a successful election,&quot; other factors, including intentional undervotes or ballot interaction problems, may have caused the undervote, the GAO said.Democratic candidate Christine Jennings lost by 369 votes in the 2006 13th Congressional District race, but more than 18,000 people who cast votes in other district races failed to have votes recorded in the congressional race. About 4,000 more votes were recorded in the Sarasota County Southern District Hospital Board election than in the House race.Jennings is again running for the congressional seat this year.The GAO report &quot;leaves most of the major questions unanswered,&quot; said the Verified Voting Foundation, an advocacy group critical of e-voting machines. The GAO report didn&#39;t address potential problems with touch-screen sensitivity and low batteries, or reports of undervotes in other races, the foundation said in its own report , based on a leaked copy of the GAO report.&quot;The GAO report leaves us with almost as many questions as before, and the most important one -- what caused the ... undervote problem -- is left unanswered,&quot; the foundation report says. &quot;The nature of the complex voting system in question, and the difficulty in auditing such a system, may mean such questions will remain indefinitely, but it is clear that more can and should be done to resolve the outstanding issues.&quot;The foundation suggested auditors could conduct more tests, including tests of touch-screen sensitivity and a check for software bugs beyond the GAO&#39;s check that the software matched versions certified by Florida.&quot;As someone who&#39;s interested in what happened in this election, my questions aren&#39;t answered,&quot; said David Dill, the foundation&#39;s founder and a computer science professor at Stanford University. &quot;I don&#39;t think we&#39;re going to get any idea about what happened in that election without a lot more investigation.&quot;The GAO report &quot;cannot be interpreted as a clean bill of health for the machines,&quot; Dill added. &quot;They did three little tests ... out of a spectrum of a lot of things, and they aren&#39;t the most important things to look at,&quot; he said.ES&amp;S, in a statement, said the GAO report shows its machines &quot;performed well&quot; in the election. GAO&#39;s findings echo studies by Florida State University and the Florida Department of State, both saying there was &quot;no evidence&quot; of ES&amp;S machine malfunction, the company said. &quot;The collective findings of these and other tests demonstrate that Sarasota County&#39;s voting system performed exactly as it was designed to function,&quot; the company said.The Election Technology Council, a trade group representing ES&amp;S and three other e-voting vendors, said the report suggests that a paper ballot to accompany the e-voting machines wouldn&#39;t necessarily solve problems. The Verified Voting Foundation and other groups have pushed for printouts to be used with e-voting machines.Elections include people, processes and technology, said David Beirne, the council&#39;s executive director. &quot;Paper is not a magic bullet,&quot; he said. &quot;It can provide an additional layer of verification for the voter, but it alone is not going to satisfy all of the stakeholders, which is why it is important to look at all of the circumstances surrounding an election to determine its overall performance.&quot;The GAO report shows the need for assurance tools that verify the operation of the e-voting machines&#39; software, Beirne added.
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An audit of touch-screen voting machines at the center of a dispute in a congressional election found no evidence of malfunction, the Florida secretary of state said Friday.
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Early voting for the US presidential election began in Florida on Monday as activists urged people to opt for early ballots to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election fiasco
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Voters in Florida began casting early ballots Monday in the 2004 presidential race, making the Sunshine State a showdown magnet for both campaigns.
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Florida officials will not worry  about hanging chads when voters make their choice in November's  presidential election but they'll be on the lookout for  software glitches, hackers and other less visible plagues.
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Cheryl Roberts was impressed with Florida's new voting machines in the 2002 primary, when she cast an electronic ballot for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride. But a series of computer glitches - including startling cases of corrupted or missing data - has undermined her faith...
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Electronic voting has improved since the 2004 elections. however, many problems with security, reliability, and operation still remain.
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US President George W. Bush's Florida victory, which helped secure his re-election, dealt a number of surprises, not least of which was the fact voting went smoothly across the state that held up the 2000 presidential results for five weeks.
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A sample of some of the calls Florida residents are receiving prior to Tuesday's Republican primary.
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Florida voters continue to embrace constitutional amendments, easily approving most of those offered Tuesday. But to do so, voters also had to embrace contradictions.
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Early voting began Monday in closely watched Florida and three other states with the election little more than two weeks away. Texas, Colorado and Arkansas joined Florida in casting
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Early voting for the U.S. presidential election began in Florida on Monday as activists urged people to opt for early ballots to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election fiasco, but computer problems and long lines soon emerged.
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Glitch in Palm Beach County, FL--home of the hanging chad--is cited as evidence that ATM-style voting machines are unreliable.