Iowa: Serious Bugs in ES&S Election Software



United Voters!

 

Many
serious bugs in ES&S election software are finally being revealed,
in spite of ES&S' claims that their software is reliable. The
latest bugs to surface, just days ago, affect the data from optical
scan machines as well as from iVotronic paperless voting machines. Bugs
revealed so far include:

 

1) March, 2004. 
Indiana discovers that ES&S has installed uncertified software on
the iVotronics in four counties. The reason? The certified version
doesn't tabulate the votes correctly.


http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1706282

 

2) May, 2004. 
Miami-Dade, Florida. Memos written nearly a year before show that there
are serious bugs in ES&S software, and they are probably present in
all ES&S counties. They cause the audit log data to be scrambled
and fail to account for ballots cast. This is the version ES&S
installed in Indiana — knowing full well about the audit bugs that had
not yet been publicized.
 

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1084316008117


For a simple description of how these bugs work, see http://www.votersunite.org/info/auditbug.asp.

 

3) July 9, 2004. 
More and more bugs in the ES&S election management software are
revealed in memos written by Miami-Dade election officials to ES&S
over a month ago. The central tabulation machines don't have the
capacity to handle all the audit data, they have problems when optical
scan information is merged, and they can't reliably accept data passed
over the phone lines.  ES&S response?  Fix the problems
yourself by changing your procedures.


http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9111841.htm

 

If your
county uses ES&S voting equipment, make sure the county officials
are aware of this information.  How many more bugs are exposed in
unpublicized memos to ES&S or still hidden in the software? 
How many bugs are hidden in the other vendors' software?

 

Paper ballots are clearly more important than ever.



Thanks!!


~ the VotersUnite team

http://www.votersunite.org

Thank you.