Nov, 1998
Dallas, Texas
41,015 votes were lost when system refused to count votes from 98 precincts during the November, 1998 election. ES&S tried to assure voters they were not lost, just uncounted. Model 100 tabulator also failed to include 8,400 mail-in ballots in the final tally.
May, 2000
Venezuela.
The biggest election in their history, with over 6,000 public offices involved, was postponed because computer software couldn’t tabulate votes and register more than 36,000 candidates. Authorities rejected any further deals with ES&S.
November, 2000
Pulaski County, Arkansas
April, 2002
Miami-Dade County, Florida
Tabulation software switched the order of the candidates names as it computed the results, which showed wins for two City Council candidates who actually lost the election.
April, 2002
Dallas County, Texas
Flawed ballot data on a paperless electronic voting machine caused a serious election miscount on the mayor’s race and 17 other races. Nearly 5,000 of the 18,000 ballots were improperly counted.
September, 2002
Miami-Dade County, Florida
8.2% of the votes were “lost” in 31 problem precincts - 1,544 votes. In some precincts, the rate was as high as 21.5%.
October, 2002
Florida
The Florida Association of Counties endorsed ES&S machines exclusively, as a result of the lobbying efforts of Sandra Mortham (former Florida Secretary of State from 1995 to 1999). Both the Association of Counties and Mortham received commissions from ES&S on the equipment purchased. The Association received about $300,000 in commissions, according to the agreement.
October, 2002
Dallas, Texas
November, 2002
Broward County, Florida
A software error caused 103,222 (22%) votes cast on ES&S iVotronic paperless voting machines not to be counted in the initial tally. The spokesman for the Florida Secretary of State had called the elections “an unqualified success.”
November, 2002
Wake County, North Carolina
November, 2002
Broward County, Florida
Machines registered votes for opponents. (Votes for candidate “A”, went to candidate “B”)
November, 2002
Ascension Parish and Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Over 200 of the ES&S machines (about 20%) malfunctioned on election day
overheating, locking up, and even shutting down while a voter was voting. The state committee that chose ES&S ignored the wishes of local officials, who preferred another system.
Fall, 2003
Guilford County, North Carolina see photo > > >
November, 2003
Louisiana
300 of the 900 voting machines sold to Louisiana did not include the shields designed to keep the machines from overheating, in part because ES&S employees didn’t know what they were doing.
January, 2004
Broward County, Florida
Machines showed 134 blank ballots. The winning margin was 12 votes. Florida law required an examination of the invalid ballots, but no ballots were available to examine because the iVotronic DRE’s have no ballots, so the county could not comply with Florida law.
March, 2004
Sarasota County, Florida
The votes of 189 people were never counted, using the iVotronic voting machines.
March, 2004
Four counties in Indiana
ES&S installed an uncertified version of the firmware in four counties. When confronted, representatives agreed to reinstall the certified version. Then it was determined that the certified version didn’t tabulate votes correctly, so the county allowed use of the uncertified version but required ES&S to put up a $10 million bond to insure against problems and lawsuits.
April, 2004
Indiana
In response to the unethical behavior of ES&S, the Indiana State legislature passed a law providing penalties for voting machine vendors who act on their own initiative without the permission of the state.
May, 2004
Miami-Dade County, Florida
Serious problems brought to light about the iVotronic. A memo written in June, 2003 by an election official, Orlando Suarez, described “serious bugs” in the ES&S election equipment. Votes appearing in the vote image report of the paperless touchscreen machines were missing in the audit log of the same machines. Two “made up” (non-active) machines appeared in the report, which were not actually used at the precinct. Suarez concluded the reports from these machines were unusable to certify an election.
May, 2004
Miami-Dade, Florida
Another memo surfaced regarding an election in Homestead in October, 2003 in which 162 ballots were not accounted for, and the system’s audit log did not recognize five of the touchscreen machines used in the Homestead election.
May, 2004
Indiana
July, 2004
All US counties that use ES&S voting systems
More and more bugs surfaced in the ES&S software for the Unity election management software, but only in response to public records requests. The response from ES&S was “fix it yourself” by changing your election procedures to work around the bugs.
August, 2004
Natrona County, Wyoming
The Unity Election Management System used to tally votes both from optical scan machines and paperless electronic voting machines, failed to tally votes correctly. Noticing that the totals for the city of Evansville seemed low, the county clerk checked the printouts from the precinct voting machines and found the totals didn’t match the totals computed by the Unity software, which combines all totals countywide.
August, 2004
Miami-Dade, Florida
Low battery problems (which ES&S claimed were repaired) caused machines to freeze up. Features for disabled voters did not work. The county received 14, 253 voter complaint forms about these and other election-day issues.
October, 2004
Craven County, North Carolina
October, 2004
Bexar County, Texas
November, 2004
Broward County, Florida
50 voters waited for hours to vote early, then were turned away because paperless electronic voting machines at the site malfunctioned.
November, 2004
Craven County, North Carolina
All vote totals in 9 of the 26 precincts were electronically doubled. Correcting the mistake changed the outcome of at least one race.
November, 2004
Lexington County, South Carolina
Officials couldn’t figure out how to retrieve 200 electronic votes from a malfunctioning iVotronic electronic voting machine.
November, 2004
LaPorte County, Indiana
The electronic voting machines reported 300 votes in every precinct, eliminating over 50,000 voters.
November, 2004
Guilford County, North Carolina
ES&S early voting machines had capacity problems, which affected anywhere from 6,000 to 20,000 ballots. After reaching 32,767 votes, the machines started counting backwards
November, 2004
Orange County, Florida
Tabulating software reached its 32,767 capacity, and began counting backwards.
November, 2004
Broward County, Florida
November, 2004
Broward County, Florida
21 machines malfunctioned and had to be replaced. Many had been used by voters before being taken out of service.
November, 2004
Mahoning County, Ohio
Problems were discovered in 16 of the 312 precincts. Also, 20 to 30 machines had to be
re-calibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate’s opponent.
November, 2004
Grays Harbor, Washington
November, 2004
Vandenburgh County, Indiana
Phantom votes appeared in the electronic totals (more votes than voters). At other polling places, there were fewer ballots than voters. In still other polling places, machine malfunctions resulted in dozens of voting machines freezing up. Three out of four machines crashed at one polling place. The voting-counting process was delayed when a power cord malfunctioned.
March, 2005
Miami-Dade County, Florida
A computer error failed to count votes during the March 8 special election. The electronic voting machines showed 1,246 under-votes for the slot machine referendum, while there were only 61 on the absentee ballots (paper). Since there was only one item on the ballot, under-votes in this case meant the ballots were completely blank.
March, 2005
Broward County, Florida
