News & Politics - Votes lost??!?!?!

*Ledi* · 11-05-2004, 04:35 AM

Quote:

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - 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.

Jack Gerbel, president and owner of Dublin, Calif.-based UniLect, said Thursday that the county's elections board was given incorrect information. There is no way to retrieve the missing data, he said.

"That is the situation and it's definitely terrible," he said.

In a letter to county officials, he blamed the mistake on confusion over which model of the voting machines was in use in Carteret County. But he also noted that the machines flash a warning message when there is no more room for storing ballots.

"Evidently, this message was either ignored or overlooked," he wrote.

County election officials were meeting with State Board of Elections Executive Director Gary Bartlett on Thursday and did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

The loss of the votes didn't appear to change the outcome of county races, and President Bush (news - web sites) won the state by about 430,000 votes in unofficial returns. But that wasn't the issue for Alecia Williams, who voted on one of the final days of the early voting period.

"The point is not whether the votes would have changed things, it's that they didn't get counted at all," Williams said.

Two statewide races remained undecided Thursday, for superintendent of public instruction, where the two candidates are about 6,700 votes apart, and agriculture commissioner, where they are only hundreds of votes apart.

How those two races might be affected by problems in individual counties was uncertain. The state still must tally more than 73,000 provisional ballots, plus those from four counties that have not yet submitted their provisionals, said Johnnie McLean, deputy director of the state elections board.

Nationwide, only scattered problems were reported in electronic voting, though roughly 40 million people cast digital ballots, voting equipment company executives had said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...=694&ncid=2043

Alright, my friend said that the US election was probably "fixed" because Americans couldn't be "stupid to vote for Bush", but I shrugged off the thought since she hates Bush. But now... I'm begining to be suspicious.......

WalkingOnSunshine · 11-05-2004, 04:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by *Ledi*
Alright, my friend said that the US election was probably "fixed" because Americans couldn't be "stupid to vote for Bush", but I shrugged off the thought since she hates Bush. But now... I'm begining to be suspicious.......

Here we go again....the song that never ends.

*Ledi* · 11-05-2004, 05:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by WalkingOnSunshine
Here we go again....the song that never ends.

Of course!

***Raonaild*** · 11-05-2004, 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by *Ledi*
Alright, my friend said that the US election was probably "fixed" because Americans couldn't be "stupid to vote for Bush", but I shrugged off the thought since she hates Bush. But now... I'm begining to be suspicious.......

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity."

The much simpler explanation is that someone just screwed up, rather than this being part of some vast conspiracy to fix the election results.

Question though: max 3005 votes?! WTF? What's so special about that number? I'm a computer programmer, and that makes no kind of sense to me ... it's nowhere near a power of 2.

*Ledi* · 11-05-2004, 05:44 AM

www.blackboxvoting.org

Interesting.

ceilirose · 11-05-2004, 10:37 AM

I think there may be some legitimate cases of voter suppression and votes not being tallied. It's not going to change the election but it still doesn't mean that they shouldn't be investigated.

No matter who you voted for most Americans shouldn't tolerate the idea of anyone's vote being suppressed nor think that waiting 9 hours in line to vote is an acceptable standard.

If electronic voting is going to be used than a paper trail has to be implemented. Republicans are rolling their eyes again but if the situation were reversed and Kerry had won..Republican lawyers would be invading Florida and Ohio right now by the thousands. Besides Ed Gillespie of the RNC was moaning and groaning about Democratic voter registration fraud for weeks prior to the election.

From what I've read most of the lines were caused by polling stations with e-voting machines. I used a ballot that was read by an optical scanner and I was in and out in 15 minutes.

**TheAngel** · 11-05-2004, 10:42 AM

Well, unless over 3 million votes for John Kerry weren't counted Bush is still the majority winner and her won by a pretty good number in most states. I hightly doubt that this is the conspiracy that you are looking for and it probably a simple case of operator error.

ceilirose · 11-05-2004, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by TheAngel
Well, unless over 3 million votes for John Kerry weren't counted Bush is still the majority winner and her won by a pretty good number in most states. I hightly doubt that this is the conspiracy that you are looking for and it probably a simple case of operator error.

Point out to me where I said there was a conspiracy proven. I said there were reports of voter suppression and irregularities. I said they should be investigated. Don't put words in my mouth.

Of course 3 million more people voted for Bush than Kerry. Of course 55 million people voted for Kerry and not Bush. None of them are going away in any great numbers.

It's a problem for all Americans..or at least it should be. Close elections can go both ways.

You can't assume it's operator error and I can't say it's voter suppression unless there is an investigation. That's simple enough, isn't it?

Eddy · 11-05-2004, 11:16 AM

There were also votes lost here in Charlotte, I saw it on the local news last night.

Milt Palacio · 11-05-2004, 12:44 PM

Yes, Bush still would've won the election.

But most importantly, the voting system in this country needs to be fixed. Every vote needs to be counted in the future.

Katis · 11-05-2004, 12:48 PM

Interesting how it's assumed that they were mostly Kerry votes that were lost. Chances are that it was just a malfunction due to bad planning by the election commission of the given state, rather than some vast right wing conspiracy.

ceilirose · 11-05-2004, 12:55 PM

I think it's amazing that all American citizens aren't concerned about these stories. They should all be investigated. No wonder we have such a political, cultural and social divide and it's not going to end anytime soon.

SuperDeluxe · 11-05-2004, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by *Ledi*
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...=694&ncid=2043

Alright, my friend said that the US election was probably "fixed" because Americans couldn't be "stupid to vote for Bush", but I shrugged off the thought since she hates Bush. But now... I'm begining to be suspicious.......

Ahh this arguement again. It must be fixed, because we certainly couldnt vote for Bush!

The biggest turn out since 1968 and 3.5 million difference in votes is the key factor.

SuperDeluxe · 11-05-2004, 01:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ceilirose
Point out to me where I said there was a conspiracy proven. I said there were reports of voter suppression and irregularities. I said they should be investigated. Don't put words in my mouth.

Of course 3 million more people voted for Bush than Kerry. Of course 55 million people voted for Kerry and not Bush. None of them are going away in any great numbers.

It's a problem for all Americans..or at least it should be. Close elections can go both ways.

You can't assume it's operator error and I can't say it's voter suppression unless there is an investigation. That's simple enough, isn't it?

Point out where he addressed you? Its more likely he was addressing the OP, who started talking about a great big fix.

SuperDeluxe · 11-05-2004, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Katis
Interesting how it's assumed that they were mostly Kerry votes that were lost. Chances are that it was just a malfunction due to bad planning by the election commission of the given state, rather than some vast right wing conspiracy.

Great point Katis, Bush won N.C by a large margin, if you look at the percentages, a majority of those lost ballots would be bush's

So it hurt bush more !


Fan Forum > General Discussion > News & Politics > Votes lost??!?!?!