[Paleopsych] Broward (voting) machines count backward

[Steve Hovland]

Broward machines count backward
By Eliot Kleinberg

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 05, 2004

FORT LAUDERDALE - It had to happen. Things were just going too smoothly.

Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a 
long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies 
should go up as more votes are counted. That's simple math. But in some 
races, the numbers had gone . . . down.

Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes 
per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward.

Why a voting system would be designed to count backward was a mystery to 
Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman. She was on the phone late Wednesday 
with Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software.

Bad numbers showed up only in running tallies through the day, not the 
final one. Final tallies were reached by cross-checking machine totals, and 
officials are confident they are accurate.

The glitch affected only the 97,434 absentee ballots, Broward Elections 
Supervisor Brenda Snipes said. All were placed in their own precincts and 
optical scanners totaled votes, which were then fed to a main computer.

That's where the counting problems surfaced. They affected only votes for 
constitutional amendments 4 through 8, because they were on the only page 
that was exactly the same on all county absentee ballots. The same software 
is used in Martin and Miami-Dade counties; Palm Beach and St. Lucie 
counties use different companies.

The problem cropped up in the 2002 election. Lieberman said ES&S told her 
it had sent software upgrades to the Florida Secretary of State's office, 
but that the office kept rejecting the software. The state said that's not 
true. Broward elections officials said they had thought the problem was 
fixed.

Secretary of State spokeswoman Jenny Nash said all counties using this 
system had been told that such problems would occur if a precinct is set up 
in a way that would allow votes to get above 32,000. She said Broward 
should have split the absentee ballots into four separate precincts to 
avoid that and that a Broward elections employee since has admitted to not 
doing that.

But Lieberman said later, "No election employee has come to the canvassing 
board and made the statements that Jenny Nash said occurred."

Late Thursday, ES&S issued a statement reiterating that it learned of the 
problems in 2002 and said the software upgrades would be submitted to 
Hood's office next year. The company was working with the counties it 
serves to make sure ballots don't exceed capacity and said no other 
counties reported similar problems.

"While the county bears the ultimate responsibility for programming the 
ballot and structuring the precincts, we . . . regret any confusion the 
discrepancy in early vote totals has caused," the statement said.

After several calls to the company during the day were not returned, an 
ES&S spokeswoman said late Thursday she did not know whether ES&S contacted 
the secretary of state two years ago or whether the software is designed to 
count backward.

While the problem surfaced two years ago, it was under a different Br oward 
elections supervisor and a different secretary of state. Snipes said she 
had not known about the 2002 snafu.

Later, Lieberman said, "I am not passing judgments and I'm not pointing a 
finger." But she said that if ES&S is found to be at fault, actions might 
include penalizing ES&S or even defaulting on its contract.