Why we need MANDATORY handcount audits

[eridani]

I'm getting seriously sick of elections being beta tests for new equipment. And really glad we didn't move to the system for the 2008 election like they wanted to.

http://www.washblog.com/story/2009/11/2/162653/232

King County's Ballot Scanners can't handle close Mayor's race?

A new King 5 Poll shows Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan are in a statistical dead heat (as reported at Publicola.net)

Unfortunately for us and the candidates, a report in the 9/3/09 Queen Anne News, states that King County's brand new Diebold/Premier (now ES&S) ballot scanners fail to record all the votes. This is bad in and of itself, but it poses an even more significant problem when there are very close races, like the McGinn/Mallahan race and possibly a few others.

I should point out that this problem was not discovered during Federal certification, state certification, or during KCE's own testing. The problem was discovered by an observant elections worker during the ballot counting phase of the August Primary.
Here is what the Queen Anne News reported:

"A few days into processing ballots for the August Primary, a King County Elections worker compared an actual ballot to its scanned image and noticed that a vote, clearly visible on the ballot, was not shown on the scanned image.

As election workers began exploring what went wrong, two problems emerged. First it was found that the scanners could not read ovals that were lightly filled or not completely filled in. Then it was discovered that minuscule amounts of ink and debris were being scrubbed off as ballots passed over the scanner. This debris would build up until the scanner could no longer see the votes under the line of built-up ink, even though the build-up not visible to the eye.

Department officials decided to zero out, or erase, all data collected to that point and re-scan all ballots. They ordered more frequent equipment cleanings and operators were told to look at scanned images at the end of each batch in hopes of catching problems...Observers from both the Democrats and Republicans on the scene agreed that a large turnout, such as that of last November, would be difficult for the Elections Department to handle until faults in the new equipment are corrected."