Diebold (which now calls itself Premier Election Systems) quietly released a “Product Advisory Notice” last Friday to the state of Florida, concerning an explained malfunction in the paper-based optical-scan voting machine used across the state. While reports of problems on those systems, and others, began surfacing throughout the day today across the Sunshine State.
The Diebold advisory warns that “No Error Message is Displayed when Ballot Fails to Feed Completely Through AccuVote-OS.”
The AccuVote-OS is Diebold’s precinct-based optical-scan ballot counter. The advisory is said to apply to “AccuVote-OS with Version 1.94w firmware” — the same system which was used in New Hampshire earlier this month, and the one on which ballots were found to have gone uncounted or miscounted in virtually all of the precincts counted during Dennis Kucinich’s election contest in that state.
Diebold’s AccuVote-OS with v1.94w firmware is the identical system seen being hacked in HBO’s Hacking Democracy after code found to be in violation of federal Voting System Guidelines was discovered on the system, and exploited to flip a mock paper ballot election without detection in late 2005.
Last November, The BRAD BLOG offered an investigative report on Diebold memory card failures discovered in Florida, and other states, about which both Diebold and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — mandated by law as a clearing house for such issues — refused to notify jurisdictions that use the same system about the problem.
Though it was too late to check by the time we obtained a copy of the advisory, we are aware of no such notice having been sent to either New Hampshire nor any of the many other jurisdictions around the country which use the same, fatally flawed hardware and software…
The two-page Diebold advisory (PDF available here) references “isolated reports from Florida jurisdictions” of “intermittent” problems such as the one described above. It goes on to offer “recommended resolution” steps for the problem, and concludes by noting…
Problems have been reported today elsewhere in Florida, which is using touch-screen voting systems in some areas, for the last time, since the state legislature has finally decided to trash them prior to this year’s November general election.
Among the problems reported, include one by Rush Limbaugh, whose touch-screen voting machine reportedly froze up while he was attempting to vote. Other reports from around the state include a “discrepancy between the number of ballots signed for and the number of ballots cast at the Daytona Beach City Island early voting site,” and voters being told in Orange County that there was no Democratic primary voting today. Other problems cropped up in Palm Beach County and elsewhere with both voter registration and voting machine issues.
In Broward County, machines which are supposed to validate driver’s licenses reportedly failed this morning. And in Sarasota County, the site of the infamous loss of some 18,000 votes on touch-screen systems during a tight Congressional election in November of 2006, there were reports of failures with memory cards on the county’s new paper-based optical-scan machines which required that some of the machines be replaced in the middle of the day today.
As usual, the full extent of such problems doesn’t normally become fully clear until after the close of polls and in the days following the election. As you might suspect, we’ll stay on it…
Why not hand count those whack ballots with a balanced number of people from the community? That is with a secure chain of custody !
Chain of custody is the best we got. Don’t screw it up ! Film it. Thanks Bev and Susan.
Let’s pay for ballots and film instead of cantankerous machines.
I know this should haved happened a few years back, but how many people realised then?
Signing off, now.
It’s all about timing.
They screw up the timing in the machine.
They screw up the timing in our elections.
Time to put Time on pause.
Time to put swearing in ANYBODY on pause. (If it’s based on these shitty failing electronic vote tabulation devices)
What’s going wrong here people?
If your sitting here reading this, and been reading these problems over time, you know there’s a nauseous feeling that our elections are broken. It’s not just a feeling. It’s the State of our elections.
The state of our elections will dictate the state of the union. That’s not good either.
When is the swamp going to be drained?
… Phil said…
“The state of our elections will dictate the state of the union.”
And that’s succinct.
A diebold advisory is just another faith based way to say “a self-serving commercial endeavor”.
It is designed, after all, to turn the public interests into diebold commerce.
I also expect a kos advisory to be released soon that tells us “malfunctions do not ever change the vote so keep the faith baby”.
When are diebold and kos going to merge legally in public, now that they have privately merged ideologically?
I just called Brattleboro VT town offices to support the petition for the Arrest of Bush/Cheney for treason
The number is (802) 254-4541
What ever happened with Kucinich’s letter to the SOS about his concern with the recount? Is there going to be more to follow, or is this it for him? I know he has to win his seat back in Ohio, but what of the NH primary?
The Diebold advisory warns that “No Error Message is Displayed when Ballot Fails to Feed Completely Through AccuVote-OS.”
Hillary must have been at the top of the ballot then!
.
It isn’t a secret the Repubs would rather be against Hillary than Obama. McCain is a bush wannabe – war, war, war!
HELP!
I just found out that my town in Massachusetts (Ashland) is using “AccuVote” Optical Scanners.
The local Election Officials here knew nothing about the historical problems with these machines, nothing about the potential for memory card tampering, nothing about the firmware/software secrecy and faulty results.
What was most alarming, is that they also told me that even if I choose to vote by absentee ballot, those ballots will also still be run through the same AccuVote scanners, in the same way, and be counted/miscounted by them!
They seemed totally oblivious to election integrity issues and provided no way for which I could vote by means of a hand-counted paper ballot.
So my question is just how do I protect myself?
How can I deal best with this situation, and make an attempt here to try and have my vote properly counted?
Hi Derek
Do you have the web page of your SOTS? If so click on that and search for election day security protocols of some kind. See who they give primary responsibility to as elections are conducted and note if the vendor probably LHS is mentioned.
If you study the protocols you might find good cause to approach your state officials to provide them with further information about known technical problems not getting passed along to the states by Diebold.
You can track these types of problems through the SOTS initially and then too if you have a voting rights organization in your area it may help to see what they have tried already.
If poll workers know how to set the machines up correctly and conduct independent elections, they may not do all that bad. Certain conditions should be met in order for the election to be verifiable.
Hope that helps. You may write with other questions to talknationradio@gmail.com
Happy voting
Dori
Move to a free country 😛
btw, this country is free as long as you don’t stur up the shit that the status quo is peddling