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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.'"

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

    The deeper you dig the more dirt piles up.

    Mandate
    this
    lying
    cheating
    sinners.