11/10/2008
In the Minnesota Senate race, there's a reason the count is so close
The voting machines are not so technically sophisticated as loaded dice.
On Monday, Threat Level published a letter written by a Michigan election clerk to the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission asserting that optical-scan machines made by Election Systems & Software failed pre-election tests because they counted votes incorrectly.
Oakland County Clerk Ruth Johnson wrote in her October 24th letter that the ES&S M-100 optical-scan machines had inconsistently counted the same ballots that were repeatedly run through the machines during tests. She said that "four of our communities or eight percent" had reported inconsistent vote totals during logic and accuracy tests and that conflicting vote totals had surfaced in other areas of Michigan as well, though she didn't elaborate on this.
"The same ballots, run through the same machines, yielded different results each time," she wrote EAC Chairwoman Rosemary Rodriguez. "This begs the question -- on Election Day, will the record number of ballots going through the remaining tabulators leave even more build-up on the sensors, affecting machines that tested just fine initially? Could this additional build-up on voting tabulators that have not had any preventative maintenance skew vote totals?
"My understanding is that the problem could occur and election workers would have no inkling that ballots are being misread," she added, also saying that "this is the first time I have ever questioned the integrity of these machines."