Diebold machine are not reliable.
Problems with elections in Ohio's most populous county are so severe that it's unlikely they can be completely fixed by November, or even by the 2008 presidential election, a report commissioned by Cuyahoga County and released Tuesday says.
Of course, this is the inevitable outcome when you fight expert advice tooth and nail every step of the way. The main tactic of many election officials facing inconvenient fact is to "run out the clock" so the dicussion becomes moot. They then hope that if the election doesn't explode in their face, they can claim their critics were "alarmists".
A nonprofit group hired to review the county's first election with new electronic voting machines found several problems with the May 2 primary, the results of which were delayed six days because roughly 18,000 absentee ballots had to be hand counted.
The absentee ballots had been improperly formatted for new optical scan voting machines. Poll workers also had problems operating the machines, some poll workers didn't show up, vote memory cards disappeared and one precinct opened hours late. Researchers also found that the four sources used to keep track of vote totals on machines did not always add up.
One of Diebold's constant themes was redundancy. They claimed that their multiple redundant systems made error impossible. Here we see the reality of that claim.
"The election system in its entirety exhibits shortcomings with extremely serious consequences, especially in the event of a close election," wrote Steven Hertzberg, director of the study by the San Francisco-based Election Science Institute.
An official with the maker of the voting machines, North Canton-based Diebold Inc., said the report was flawed because the researchers did not properly review electronic votes in some cases.
Mark Radke, director of marketing for Diebold subsidiary Diebold Election Systems, also blamed inadequately trained poll workers, saying the totals didn't always add up because some changed memory cards without also changing the paper receipt rolls.
It ie NEVER Diebold's fault. They make perfect machines, maschiens so perfect that mear mortals are incapable of using them correctly. According to Diebold EVERY SINGLE study that has come out, ALL of which indict their machines, are wrong. The only time that Diebold has EVER admitted error was when its management were UNDER OATH in California.
It is an uncommon day when the nation's second-largest provider of voting systems concedes that its flagship products in California have significant security flaws and that it supplied hundreds of poorly designed electronic-voting devices that disenfranchised voters in the March presidential primary.
Diebold Election Systems Inc. President Bob Urosevich admitted this and more, and apologized "for any embarrassment."
"We were caught. We apologize for that," Urosevich said of the mass failures of devices needed to call up digital ballots.
Poll workers in Alameda and San Diego counties hadn't been trained on ways around their failure, and San Diego County chose not to supply polls with backup paper ballots, crippling the largest roll-out of e-voting in the nation March 2. Unknown thousands of voters were turned away at the polls.
"We're sorry for the inconvenience of the voters," Urosevich said.
"Weren't they actually disenfranchised?" asked Tony Miller, chief counsel to the state's elections division.
After a moment, Urosevich agreed: "Yes, sir."
Get the facts on voter fraud.