2007 — Various News Reports
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Vote-counting machines hit glitch in Boulder, Colorado, mail ballot election
1,100 mail ballots forwarded in Douglas County, Colorado
Optical scanners miscount: Recount changes results for Greenwich, Connecticut, town meeting candidate
© 2007 by Ryan Morgan, Boulder Daily Camera
July 11, 2007 — Election officials counting votes Tuesday night hit a speed bump when a software glitch forced them to re-scan four batches of ballots [with Hart Intercivic equipment].
Alisa Lewis, Boulder's city clerk, said the problem arose when officials tried to get a vote count off of electric cards containing data from ballots that had been scanned, but not yet counted.
"When we went to do the tally, it wouldn't read," she said.
Officials had to re-scan those ballots to get them counted, she said.
Hillary Hall, Boulder County's clerk and recorder, said the nature of this election — in which only about 10,700 people voted — meant the problem was a small one.
"Luckily it was an election of this size," she said. "This would be unacceptable for any other election. We'll need to get this resolved."
Hall said the problem was made worse because officials didn't get the help they would have liked from election equipment vendor Hart InterCivic.
"We didn't receive the support we needed from Hart, and that was disappointing," she said.
Contact Camera Staff Writer Ryan Morgan at 303-473-1333 or morganr@dailycamera.com.
Based on article by Joey Bunch, The Denver Post
October 31, 1007 — In one of those little "glitches" so common to mail ballot elections, which election officials hope we'll overlook, a vendor in charge of mass mailings forwarded about 1,100 of the 108,876 Douglas County, Colorado, ballots to new addresses, a no-no under state election laws. Mail ballots were sent out earlier this month but one shouldn't ask why the county clerk, or the vendor, didn't check the U.S. Postal Service National Change Of Address (NCOA) database prior to mailing the ballots? The designated spokesman for the vendor, Omaha-based Pitney Bowes PSI, was traveling Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. But certainly a company like Pitney Bowes must be accustomed to checking NCOA prior to mass mailings?
By Tuesday, all the ballots, including 22 sent to voters who had moved but were still eligible to vote in the election, were accounted for. According to Douglas County election chief Jack Arrowsmith all of the improperly forwarded ballots were invalidated. But we'll just have to take his word for it. However, his information is certainly second hand.
Arrowsmith said the error was an honest mistake but misplacing 1,100 ballots in a precinct election would be considered a major problem. However, in a mail ballot election, 1,100 ballots are a tiny fraction of those that are unaccounted for, which encourages election fraud.
Typically the company that made the mistake handles direct-mail advertising. "If you're selling widgets, getting your stuff forwarded is a good thing," Arrowsmith said. "But ballots, it's not," which is certainly an understatement and nonsense. Advertisements sent by mail are rarely forwarded.
The public is, of course, supposed to be reassured by these platitudes. But one wonders how many races or issues will be decided by less than 1,100 votes in this election? And how many "glitches" does it take to add up to a real problem with mail ballot elections?
© 2007 by Ken Borsuk, Greenwich Post
November 21, 2007 —While the new optical scan voting machines won raves from poll station managers on Election Day, a machine error nearly cost a newly elected Representative Town Meeting (RTM) member his seat.
When results became official in the RTM races on Nov. 6, it initially appeared that Randall Smith from District 5 in Riverside had not been elected. With a vote total of 424, he was one of three candidates from the district not to be elected to the 19 seats District 5 has on RTM. However, a recount in the district found that votes that had been cast for him had mistakenly been given to write-in candidates by the machines.
By the time the hand recount was done, Mr. Smith had enough votes to make it and will begin his first term next month. This was the first year the optical scan machines were used in Connecticut and now Mr. Smith's hoping for the state to make improvements to keep the problem from repeating.
Since this was his first run for RTM and Mr. Smith is relatively new to Greenwich — his family moved to town two years ago — he went into the race without expectations. District 5 was one of the more competitive districts, with 22 candidates running for 19 spots.
"I haven't lived here as long as some of the other candidates running so I went in hoping I'd win, but I wasn't going to be surprised if I lost," Mr. Smith said. "I wasn't shocked, but I was disappointed. I had put a lot of work into running and I was left thinking that maybe if I'd just knocked on a few more doors it would have put me over the top."
Under the impression that he lost, Mr. Smith wasn't about to give up his RTM ambitions. He said he was already planning to run again in two years when all seats were up for re-election, but then a call came telling him his chance to serve might be a lot sooner than he thought.
Mr. Smith said he gave a lot of the credit to the work of Mary Ferry, District 5's chairwoman. Ms. Ferry told the Post that when the polls closed on Election Day, she went to District 5's polling station at Riverside School to copy down the results. It was there that she first noticed the high number of votes going to write-in candidates, which struck her as unusual since there were no officially registered write-in candidates in the district race.
Ms. Ferry called the town's Registrar of Voters office, which set the recount wheels in motion.
Republican Registrar of Voters Veronica Musca could not be reached for comment before press time. Derek Flap, a spokesman for the Connecticut Secretary of the State's Office, reported no other complaints in the state of machines acting in this manner.
The idea that the election results were not quite what they initially seemed wasn't what Mr. Smith was expecting to hear when he got the call about the situation.
"I was very surprised to hear this and I wanted to know what happened," he said.
"They told me about the scanners and how the votes were given to the wrong candidates and that they were going to do a recount because it looked like I was tied with someone else. I still hadn't won at this point, so this was a bit of a roller coaster ride for me and my family. First we'd lost. Then it looked like we had actually tied, and then it turned out we won.
I hadn't wanted to get too excited when I first heard about the recount, but it was a great feeling when I got the call that I actually won. We definitely ran the whole gamut of emotions with this, but it's exciting to win and I'm really looking forward to being able to serve the town."
With the recount, Mr. Smith was able to gain 20 new votes to be elected to the RTM, edging him over fellow first-time candidate Thomas Wood.
Mr. Flap said there will be an audit of 70 precincts, including Greenwich, throughout the state to see how the machines worked. He said the optical scanner memory cards would also be examined, just as they were before the election, to make sure there was no tampering or programming errors.
| EJF Home | Where To Find Help | Join the EJF | Comments? | Get EJF newsletter |
| Vote Fraud and Election Issues Book | Table of Contents | Site Map | Index |
| Chapter 13 — Voting Problems In The 2007 Elections |
| Next — Chapter 14 -Election Web Sites And Problems |