Texas counties and related voting problems during 2006 primary

[sonias]

I was sent a word document of these stories. I fixed the broken links and added some more stories. DU is a good place to keep this kind of research, so here you are. I also have each of these stories in text format as well, in case they disappear into the media archives on these sites. Feel free to keep adding other stories as you find them. My favorite story headline "Hairy Potter elections".

A List of Texas counties (with related stories in the press) where problems with voting machines occurred on Primary Election Day, March 7, 2006

• El Paso County- Recount sought in District 78 race (Diebold)
  
• Galveston County- New voting system, same problems (Hart eSlate and eScan)
  
• Hidalgo County:
  
  
  
  • Garcia Won't Concede Election, Questions Many Ballots (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  • Elections administrator sends complaints to state office (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  • Salinas earns majority over Garcia with all precincts in (County found votes on unused machines) (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  
  
• Jefferson County
  
  
  
  • Jefferson County election recount (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  • Election officials try to work out bugs (ES&S)
    
  • Voting woes mar debut of electronic ballots (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  • Confusion mars new voting process (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  • Jefferson County recounts votes; same winners, different numbers
    
  • Highest turnout in years meets technical glitches (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  • ES&S Promises Smoother Elections In The Future (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  • Jefferson County Withholding ES&S Payment Until After Runoff (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  • County votes no for payment (ES&S iVotronic)
    
  
  
  
• Potter and Randall Counties- Electronic voting goes smoothly - not tallying (Potter – ES&S iVotronic Randall – Hart eSlate)
  
  
  
• Potter County- Hairy Potter elections (ES&S)
  
  
• Robertson County:
  
  
  
  • Robertson County vote tallies delayed (ES&S)
    
  • Robertson County says glitches delayed results (ES&S)
    
  
  
  
• Starr County - County candidates seek recount
  
  
• Tarrant County:
  
  
  
  • Vote spike blamed on program snafu (Hart InterCivic -eSlate) (100,000 votes added to the total due to programming error)
    
  • County ponders recount of votes Hart Intercivic (Hart InterCivic -eSlate)
    
  • Primary election outcomes challenged (Hart InterCivic -eSlate)
    
  
  
  
• Tom Green County:
  
  
  
  • Computer problems delay election returns (Hart InterCivic -eSlate)
    
  • Election official: Paper ballots will stay despite delays (Hart InterCivic -eSlate)
    
  • Ballot recount stopped (Hart InterCivic -eSlate)
    
  
  
  
• Webb County/Bexar:
  
  
  
  • Cuellar keeps job, Rodriguez says narrow lead has message (Counting problems – ES&S)
    
  • Cuellar defeats Rodriguez in congressional grudge match (Counting problems – ES&S)
    
  • Election uproar; Webb County officials say there were plenty of red flags ES&S
    
  • Glitches' get blame in Webb (ES&S)
    
  • Editorial: E-voting continues to present problems (ES&S)
    
  
  
  
• Williamson County- Ballot counting runs into lags in Williamson County (ES&S iVotronic)
  
• TX: Most voters give the system a thumbs up (It's apparent that where voters are given a choice between e-voting and paper they go to the paper)
  
  

Sonia

[sonias]

1. Public hearing in Austin at SOS for Diebold machines 3/23

And a related event. I'm going to this and I'll post a report when I get back tomorrow.

http://info.sos.state.tx.us/pls/pub/pubomquery$omquery.queryview?P_OM_ID=82361&Z_CHK=2121
Agency Name: Office of the Secretary of State
Date of Meeting: 03/23/2006
Time of Meeting: 09:00 AM (Local Time)
Status: Active
Street Location: 208 E. 10th Street, Jefferson Rusk Building, 2nd Floor Conference Room
City Location: Austin
Meeting State: TX
TRD ID: 2006001976
Submit Date: 03/03/2006
Emergency Meeting?: No
Additional Information Obtained From: Katie Morrissey or Irene Diaz, 512-463-5650 or 1-800-252-8683
Agenda: VOTING SYSTEM PUBLIC FORUM
March 23, 2006

Public Hearing to provide interested persons an opportunity to express their views for or against the approval of the Diebold Voting System GEMS 1-18-24 examined on January 19, 2006.

Examiners reports may be viewed at:
http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/jan2006_diebold.shtml

Sonia

[MagickMuffin]

3. I'm glad you are going to this ;-D

If I lived down that way I would join you. However I will await your report, I know you'll do a great job in explaining what the hell is the SOS going to do about those machines that can't conduct a fair and glitch=free elections.

How will we know who winners of close races if we can't trust the machines?
WTF will be done in the name of democracy?

Sonia, if you get to ask questions or have a statement perhaps you can express our concerns over these serious issues.
I really don't expect the SOS to do much in the way of correcting their incompetence, or their lack of honesty. After all this is the only way they can win!

Looking forward to your report.

[Melissa G]

11. Thanks for the post and the research ,Sonia! I'll see you there!!!!

[sonias]

12. Great MelissaG!

So what do you think? Whose going to testify in favor of Diebold? I guess we'll find out tomorrow what nut cases support the stealing of our elections. Taking my camera. Heard that you could actually film the hearing. I don't have a video cam. Sure hope someone does there though.

Sonia

[Melissa G]

13. Email one of your ACLU contacts....

Their lawyer was who broke open the last hearing and they were very good speakers there. I hope that Rice professor is at this hearing too.
I believe that one was filmed by someone. I'm remembering a camera but maybe it was just for big brother.. BB is pretty familiar with our faces by now...:hi:

[MagickMuffin]

2. Way to go Sonia

that is a great start to some serious research. :applause: Hopefully I will be able to add to it.

Why oh Why are we allowing our voting rights to continue to be stolen?

That apparently is the only way that the Repubs can gain and retain power:grr:

I think after all of the research is done on this we print it out and distribute liberally. Anywhere there is people, it should be brought to their attention, that there is a serious problem concerning our voting system. I bet that most people don't even realize we have a problem with our elections and electronic machines. They probably wouldn't like knowing their votes are not a secure vote.:argh:

We must become the megaphone of democracy!

[sonias]

5. Please do MM

I know you do some good research. The interesting thing is in that race in Tom Green county court of law race, it was a republican county chair that raised the red flag. That's the story babylonsister posted yesterday from the BradBlog.

The story is the "Ballot recount stopped" story listed above.

Sonia

[crispini]

4. Nothing from Harris?

Here's the story I remember from Dallas county.

An electronic voting machine was stolen from the home of a Dallas County elections judge over the weekend.

iVotronic voting machine
Sgt. Don Peritz, a Dallas County Sheriff spokesman, said the judge notified sheriff's dispatchers Sunday afternoon that the iVotronic touch-screen machine was stolen from his home in the 200 block of East 5th Street.

Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet said the machine will not function without an additional piece of hardware called a personalized electronic ballot, or PEB.

Mr. Sherbet said his employees identified the serial number of the stolen machine and have blocked it from any access to the elections system, reducing the risk of vote fraud.
more...
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/030706dnmetvotingmachine.8f10b1af.html

[sonias]

6. I'm sure there are more stories crispini

So thank you for the Dallas one. I have heard from an election judge in Harris that there were problems in the setup of the eSlate machines before the primary. They failed several tests. We never saw any media coverage of the problems however.

This collection is just a start. If anyone sees any other TX e-voting stories please post them here.

And also please take action like flamin lib suggests on this thread
How elections are lost or stolen
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=180x29084

Sonia

[WestHoustonDem]

7. I've heard anecdotal reports of vote counts being questionable in minority

precincts, but haven't seen documentation of it. The Hubert Vo recount in 2004 went surprisingly smoothly, I was there.

[sonias]

8. WHD, you take Harris county please

If you see any media coverage of e-voting issues from the primary or the runoff in Harris, please let us know.

thanks

Sonia

[WestHoustonDem]

10. Will do! n/t

[Czolgosz]

9. K & R for "Diebold. Taking America Paperless"

[texpatriot2004]

14. Texas Voting is crooked as a dog's hind leg nm

[sonias]

15. Tom Green recount update story

San Angelo Standard-Times article

Officials work on ballot puzzle
Machine used for early voting, Election Day could be at fault

March 23, 2006

A misplaced machine could be the cause of difficulties with Tom Green County's suspended recount of votes in the March 7 primary election, recount officials said Wednesday.

Although initially blamed on a malfunction of computerized voting machines, a possible thousand-vote discrepancy could have been caused when election workers mistakenly allowed a computer used for early voting to be used again on Election Day, county Republican Party Chairman Dennis McKerley said.

As a result, he said, the early votes in the machine were tabulated correctly on Election Day. However, they were not printed for the subsequent hand recount because workers believed the machine contained only Election Day votes.

Election and recount officials said they won't know how many early votes the machine contains until the recount is restarted.

"This machine may make up for all of them or some of them," McKerley said, referring to the gap - believed to be as large as 1,400 votes - between the certified and recounted totals. "We don't know."

Sonia

[sonias]

16. Final resolution for Tom Green story

San Angelo Standard-Times article
March 27, 2006

Recount in favor of Roberts
With ballots counted, recounted, reprinted and counted again, the Tom Green County Republican Party certified the results Sunday night after two tumultuous weeks that featured a myriad of problems - all of which appear to have been caused by human error.

Hughes, the leading vote-getter, received 3,529 votes, six fewer than the number certified in the original tally March 11. Roberts' vote total increased by 10 to 3,043. Edwards finished with 3,028, seven more than originally counted.

The 9,600 total votes are 11 more than were originally certified.

Here's the part I find interesting. The final tally is 11 votes more than originally certified. I'm sure those were all hand counted paper ballots of course. Those Hart Intercivic boys "fixed" the machines. No where in the article does it explain what happened to that errant machine from early voting. How did that one machine miraculously come up with all the missing ballots, as many as 1,400. Oh my.

Sonia

[sonias]

17. One more out of Jefferson

Beaumont Enterprise article
03/27/2006

Voting machine issues heat up
BEAUMONT - Problems with the provider of Jefferson County's electronic voting machines could lead to paper ballots and a manual count for the April 11 runoff, in violation of federal law.

Election Systems & Software, the Nebraska-based company that provided the county's machines, has refused to program equipment for the runoff until the county pays the $1.95 million bill.

The county has refused to pay before resolving problems that plagued the March 7 primary and culminated in a full recount of Election Day ballots after some votes were counted twice.

County Clerk Carolyn Guidry has listed 10 specific deficiencies, including ill-informed ES&S personnel, equipment failures and inadequate training.

After a closed session Monday, Commissioners Court voted to contact ES&S immediately to demand action by the company to correct problems. The court also decided to have Guidry investigate ways to conduct the runoff without using ES&S equipment and authorized the District Attorney's office to "take any appropriate action" against ES&S.

Early voting for the April 11 runoff starts Monday. Ballots in some form will include one statewide judicial race for Republicans. Democrats will decide statewide races for U.S. senator and lieutenant governor and a county-wide race for Criminal District Court judge.

Now that's a county court taking the appropriate action. Just withhold payment. Pull those optical scan ballots out of your storage and tell the Feds to shove it.

Sonia

[Melissa G]

18. There is some good advice!

Sonia writes...

Now that's a county court taking the appropriate action. Just withhold payment. Pull those optical scan ballots out of your storage and tell the Feds to shove it.

We could restore democracy with that kind of attitude!

[meg]

19. Thanks, Sonias

Great job!