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4503 Electronic Votes Lost in NC

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the exited-polls dept.

ctnp writes "While it wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome, 4530 votes were lost in one North Carolina county after one machine was configured to store 3,005 votes instead of the expected 10,500. 'The machines flash a warning message when there is no more room for storing ballots. 'Evidently, this message was either ignored or overlooked,' he [Jack Gerbel, CEO of machine-providing UniLect] wrote.'"

5 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Happened in florida by moosesocks · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't look now, but something even dumber happened in florida as well.

    To summarize, since there should be no more than 32,000 people in a precinct, the machines were not configured to handle more votes than that. As a result, they counted BACKWARDS once the 32,000 person limit was reached.

    Methinks this is a buffer overflow issue (32,768 votes as opposed to the 32,000 quoted in the article). How thick can you be to design a polling system storing votes in an int...

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
    1. Re:Happened in florida by hab136 · · Score: 3, Informative
      How in the hell did one voting machine take over 32000 votes? Suppose they had a 16 hour window to vote, that would mean it averaged less than 2 seconds per vote.

      Read the article:

      Election officials quickly determined the problem was caused by the Unity Software that pulls together votes from five machines tabulating absentee ballots.

      In other words, they were feeding absentee ballots to 5 machines, and then the machine that added up those 5 machines' totals overflowed.

      No 16 hour time limit, as these are the mail-in votes.

  2. It gets worse. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The deeper you dig the more dirt piles up.

    Mandate
    this
    lying
    cheating
    sinners.

  3. Nonsense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    By all accounts, the election was won fair and square. Making such unfounded claims is just reaching out in utter desperation for that last gasp of breath. How pathetic!

  4. Re:The truth is: It doesn't matter. by TiggsPanther · · Score: 3, Informative

    In this case the /. summary (at least) isn't implying that the lost votes would have changed who won. And that's not really the issue in hand.

    No, regardless of whether the votes would have made a difference or not it's bloody worrying that such an error was overlooked. If these machines become more and more used and the operators ignore messages like this routinely then next time (whether in the US, UK, or anywhere else) it might well be a significant difference lost.

    --
    Tiggs
    "120 chars should be enough for everyone..."