Deja Vu: Florida Election In Hands of Courts
Although undervoting in absentee ballots was 2.5 percent for this race, it was about 15 percent for votes cast on electronic voting machines. That's about one-out-of-seven voters. Some precincts had undervoting rates of 25 - 38 percent. (pdf) Forbes reports that "[e]lectronic machines usually register an undervote rate of less than 1%, according to an August study conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice."
According to Salon's projections, if Sarasota County had had an undervote rate similar to the other neighboring counties, which ranged from 2.2 to 5.3 percent of all ballots cast, and had the missing voters split the way the rest of the county did, going 53 to 47 for Jennings, Jennings would have won the election by between 200 and 600 votes.
Election officials knew that there were issues with the machines, based upon pre-election day voting, and elections officials called the problem "critical." According to Salon, "[o]fficials were concerned enough to ask poll workers to caution voters on Election Day to be careful not to miss the race, but not all poll workers followed through."
Two lawsuits have been filed calling for a revote -- one by the Democratic candidate and another by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, People for the American Way, Voter Action and Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Ironically, the county spent $4.7 million for these paperless voting machines in 2001. Citizens passed a ballot measure this year rejecting that decision and directing the county to spent about $3.6 million on an optical scan system -- providing something tangible to recount.
However, even paper ballots cannot overcome flawed information design. I've not see a screenshot of the ballot on these machines, but the description in the lawsuit makes me see "banner blindness" (a documented phenomena in usability research) as possibly part of the problem:
Many voters, such as Plaintiffs Ellen Fedder, Lance Jones, Barbara Klein, Dovie Murray and Lois Harmes reported that the congressional race was easy to miss because of its placement at the top of the second screen of choices, above a colored header introducing the state office races that followed, beginning with governor, and that the ballot layout and design were thus unclear and confusing.
Gack. It is 2000 all over again.
There's more:
In addition to high undervote rates, iVotronics in Sarasota County Precinct 22 did not provide “zero tapes” prior to the commencement of voting on Election Day, a step required as an indication that the machine does not contain any votes prior to the official start of voting. Also on Election Day in Precinct 22, the internal clock in at least one iVotronic machine was set for a date other than November 7, 2006.
About ES&S
ES&S is the country's biggest supplier of election hardware and software. The Washington Times reported post-election that "ES&S voting equipment in Pennsylvania and MicroVote systems in Indiana experienced failures" -- requiring polls to stay open past posted closing times.
In addition, Voters United documents problems with ES&S equipment in the 2006 election in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia.
The day before the election, Information Week reported that "ES&S machines, used in parts of Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, have had ... screens [register] the wrong vote, according to Project Vote's report. The machines could also stop counting ballots or begin counting backward once they have reached capacity, the report states."
Problems were reported in California in 2005, after a special election. A letter from the office of the Secretary of State, obtained by AP, "stated the Secretary of State would start decertifying ES&S’s software if the company didn’t immediately begin to address problems with the machines that were raised in the letter."
And in a January 2004 special election in Florida, with one item on the ballot (that is, there was no rational explanation for an undervote): "ES&S electronic voting machines showed a total of 134 undervotes... The winner received 12 more votes than the runner-up. Florida law requires a manual recount of invalid votes when the winning margin is less than one-quarter of one percent. However, election officials determined that no recount was required because the 134 invalid votes were cast on electronic voting machines, and there is no record of the original votes."
Also in 2004, an ES&S project manager resigned after she "became a public figure when she revealed voting machine problems."