This is ANOTHER instance of the President getting more votes than were possible. (
Here’s the other one I’ve blogged so far.)

Election problems due to a software glitch
By Sue Book for the Sun Journal.

A systems software glitch in Craven County’s electronic voting equipment is being blamed for a vote miscount that, when corrected, changed the outcome of at least one race in Tuesday’s election.
Then, in the rush to make right the miscalculation that swelled the number of votes for president here by 11,283 more votes than the total number cast, a human mistake further delayed accurate totals for the 40,534 who voted.
The glitch occurred Tuesday night as absentee ballot totals for one-stop early voting at three Craven County locations and ballots mailed-in were being entered, said Tiffiney Miller, Craven County Board of Elections director.
The Elections Systems and Software equipment had downloaded voting information from nine of the county’s 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the precinct totals were added a second time. Precincts affected were Havelock East, Havelock West, River Bend, Cove City, Ernul, Fort Totten, Grover C. Fields, Glenburnie and West New Bern.
An override, like those occurring when one attempts to save a computer file that already exists, is supposed to prevent double counting, but did not function correctly, Miller said.
“I have redone every (personal electronic ballot) completely and am adding the absentees,” she said early Thursday. “Every precinct was redone.”
The second set of incorrect numbers came when the total for one of the batches of absentee ballots was not included in the first manual recount.
“That’s why we have a week before the votes are official, so if we do find problems we can get them straight before the votes are certified,” said Miller, who was in her office before 8 a.m. Thursday, hand-crunching the numbers retrieved from the voting machines.

Continue reading →

Why Did CNN Change Their Exit Poll Data for Ohio After 1:00 AM?

We likes to be thorough 🙂
Continue reading →

I know it’s only 3,893 “extra” votes, but if this kind of thing happened enough times, it would make quite a big difference.
Time to get our calculators out and start doing the math guys. According to this article, Kerry “lost” by 136,000 votes. 3,893 divides into 136,000 around 35 times. There are 88 counties in Ohio. That means this kind of error would only have to take place in less than half of them to provide Bush with a winning result.
One thing I’m wondering is: are there even enough Repubs registered to cast the votes they are claiming to be cast? Or are we supposed to believe that some Democrats voted for Bush? Help me out here guys! Or send me the numbers and I’m happy to do the math myself.

Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes
By John McCarthy for the Associated Press.

An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County’s unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry’s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush’s total should have been recorded as 365…
Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after saying that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result…
Kimball Brace, president of the consulting firm Election Data Services, said it’s possible the fault lies with the software that tallies the votes from individual cartridges rather than the machines or the cartridges themselves.
Either way, he said, such tallying software ought to have a way to ensure that the totals don’t exceed the number of voters.
County officials did not return calls seeking details.
Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch that on one of the three machines at that precinct, a malfunction occurred when its cartridge was plugged into a reader and generated a faulty number. He could not explain how the malfunction occurred.
Damschroder said people who had seen poll results on the election board’s Web site called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been discovered when the official count for the election is performed later this month, he said…
Other electronic machines used in Ohio do not use the type of computer cartridge involved in the error, state officials say.
But in Perry County, a punch-card system reported about 75 more votes than there are voters in one precinct. Workers tried to cancel the count when the tabulator broke down midway through, but the machine instead double-counted an unknown number in the first batch. The mistake will be corrected, officials say.

Continue reading →

Samuelson in, Rembert out … for now
First recount changes county commission result
In The Charlotte Observer.
Nice how the mistakes get “fixed” when it means a Republican keeping her position.

A retally of early voting ballots has changed the result of the tight Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners race, possibly putting incumbent Republican Ruth Samuelson back on the board.
But totals could change again. And elections voting officials can’t say yet what caused the problems.
When voting ended Tuesday, Democrats appeared to sweep three at-large seats.
But on Wednesday, Republicans pointed out early-voting discrepancies that showed more votes in the presidential race than people who voted. Elections officials spent today counting the ballots anew. The end result: former school board member Wilhelmenia Rembert, a Democrat, slipped from second to fourth, a mere 28 votes behind Samuelson.
Democrats Parks Helms and Jennifer Roberts were first and second, and Samuelson was third, with 63 fewer votes than Roberts. Elections officials still must rule on whether roughly 6,000 provisional ballots will be counted. That decision could change the close race again.

N.C. Computer Loses More Than 4,500 Votes
In the Associated Press.

More than 4,500 votes have been lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered other problems may change results in races around the state.
Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county’s electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.
Expecting the greater capacity, the county used only one unit during the early voting period. “If we had known, we would have had the units to handle the votes,” said Sue Verdon, secretary of the county election board.
Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost.

Continue reading →

The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy

By Thom Hartmann for Common Dreams.

The hot story in the Blogosphere is that the “erroneous” exit polls that
showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren’t
erroneous at all – it was the numbers produced by paperless voting
machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more
analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election
fraud in the history of the world, however, it’s critical that we keep the
largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing
private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and
boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will
enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?
Maybe Florida went for Kerry, maybe for Bush. Over time – and through the
efforts of some very motivated investigative reporters – we may well find
out (Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org just filed what may be the
largest Freedom of Information Act [FOIA} filing in history), and bloggers
and investigative reporters are discovering an odd discrepancy in exit
polls being largely accurate in paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate
in touch-screen electronic voting states Even raw voter analyses are
showing extreme oddities in touch-screen-run Florida, and eagle-eyed
bloggers are finding that news organizations are retroactively altering
their exit polls to coincide with what the machines ultimately said.

Continue reading →