Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org and VoteTrustUSA.Org
Summit County has recently had problems with failed memory cards as related by The BRAD BLOG on March 9 and March 10. As reported at the time, as many as 30% of the cards completely failed initial testing in the county. A few days later, corresponding tests in North Carolina found more than 1000 of the cards failed. The memory cards, amongst other things, store the vote tabulations from elections.
New tests now in Summit County have also revealed additional failures on both memory cards, and the voting machines “firmware” as well.
Today the Akron Beacon Journal has revealed that Summit County has discovered 28 more bad cards in a batch of what was supposed to be good cards as sent to them by ES&S specifically to replace the previous bad ones.
The Beacon-Journal reports:
ES&S officials blamed faulty batteries in the cards for the problems, but even after batteries were replaced, dozens of cards continued to fail.
Eventually, continued testing resulted in the county’s obtaining 525 memory cards that supposedly worked properly and that were approved by state inspectors as well. But company officials working in Summit County have since discovered 28 new problem cards.
Board of Elections officials, however, discovered the newest batch of problem memory cards by accident.
Elections Board Deputy Director Marijean Donofrio said board staff members were looking for memory cards that are used to demonstrate the new equipment for the public, and happened upon a box of cards that were banded together.
When she asked about the cards, Donofrio said she was told they had either low or dead batteries or problems reading back data that had been programmed onto them.
ES&S officials then told the county that the company would replace all 349 cards from the batch that included the 28 new problem cards. All were manufactured by the Vikant Corp., an ES&S subcontractor.
The Beacon-Journal is also now reporting that ES&S has found a problem with the firmware — the software which is embedded into the system’s hardware — on their touch-screen machines that are used in counties across Ohio and across the country. ES&S is currently in 41 of Ohio’s 88 counties.
Other states and counties who use ES&S should be made aware of the problems, since ES&S does not seem to be doing so.
On the firmware issue, the Beacon-Journal reports…
Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matthew Damschroder said ES&S discovered that some of the firmware in the touch-screen machines does not properly record votes for write-in candidates. Franklin County machines are undergoing an upgrade this week to correct the problem, he said.
Damschroder stressed that ES&S discovered the problems and took preventative action to correct it. He said the new software already has received federal and state certification. “They’ve only seen it happen twice, but twice is too much,” he said.
At the last meeting of the Summit County Board of Elections the board voted to subpoena, if necessary, an ES&S official to answer questions about the problems. If necessary the county will consider legal action against ES&S. This meeting is taking place today so we may have an update later.
READERS ACTION: If you live in a state that uses ES&S voting machines, please let your state or county know about these problems. The company will not do that and there is no system in place at this time to force them to do any recalls or product warnings.
I have contacted elections officials in Indiana and South Dakota about these problems and they appreciate the information. In both cases they told me that they would never expect ES&S to let them know about problems elsewhere, even if it directly affected the state’s voting machines.
UPDATE: In a report directly after today’s county Board of Elections meeting with ES&S the Akron Beacon Journal reports that the vendor explained about the memory card problems:
Once the problems were discovered, ES&S sent one of its engineers to the Vikant Corp., the Illinois contractor that makes the cards, to help correct the problem.
She said the faulty cards had a circuit board error and did not have their batteries properly charged in the manufacturing process, which caused them to have repeated low-battery or dead-battery issues.
The problems have been corrected, she said.
Buchanan told the board that 349 new memory cards would arrive in Akron today, all of which were made after the manufacturing errors were addressed. The county voting equipment includes 525 of the cards — one for each of the county’s 475 precincts and 50 extras.
An initial batch of 176 were made overseas and never had problems. ES&S had sent several batches of cards to replace the other 349, and had believed they were all working properly.
However, in additional testing Friday, more failures were discovered, resulting in the company again replacing all 349 cards.
“Those memory cards will be here today and they will work on Election Day,” Buchanan told the board.
The company also responded to concerns about why one of their employees was conducting testing of voting equipment without any notification to county elections officials and without members of the Republican and Democratic election staff as witnesses. They promised this would not happen again.
The company also apologized for not being more open to local media and for not answering their questions. One member of the board pointed out that the elections board was a public body and that ES&S needed to be more public in their actions. The company spokeswoman assured that this problem would be taken care of. Immediately after the meeting that same spokeswoman refused to answer questions from the media and, instead, referred all questions to corporate talking-heads.
The arrogance of these companies is stunning.
I’m sorry if this has been discussed but how do memory cards work? If the dysfunction is a battery problem, do they slowly go bad during the voting day and record less and less votes as the day goes on, or when they go bad do they just go blank, or what?
Check out these prices for Vikant Corp.’s fucking memory cards:
1MB PCMCIA SRAM CARD – $92
2MB PCMCIA SRAM CARD – $115
4MB PCMCIA SRAM CARD – $165
512k PCMCIA SRAM CARD – $79.99
http://www.vikant.com/products.asp?cat=11
Not only is this a huge waste of taxpayer money (349 * $165 = 57585) but insanely incompetent. Our votes are being stored on volatile memory card with only a little 3 volt battery securing them?
Why are electonic voting companies entrusted to count our votes using ten year old technology?
If those pieces of shit can meet federal and state standards, we’re in trouble.
Miss P:
There are two batteries, the main replaceable one and a backup rechargeable but non-replaceable one. I would assume the backup battery recharges when it is in a powered machine automatically, but that may not be the case.
If they are indeed using the SRAM cards, they would lose everything. I doubt they are using the flash memory cards because those do not require a battery in the first place.
So which ES&S machines are these cards for? DREs or scanners? And which models?
I didn’t see that in the story.
shw
Shannon #4 –
They are for their precinct-based optical-scan machines. Probably M-100s.
I wonder which cards they would send to democratic precincts, and which to republican ones.
— Bigfoot
Christopher Hooten,
Repug – 4mb cards
Dems – 512k cards
Of Course!
If only Blackwell had bought ESS stock too, maybe they could have got fresh batteries!
Here in Lake County The Director of Elections is not happy that they were given only two choices (ES&S or Diebold) by Blackwell and the Legislature. All we can hope for is rigorous testing will be done before the primary and before the general election. And that voting machine "technicians"are not allowed to tamper with the voting machines or tabulators before or afer the election.
Has it occured to anyone else but me that these "problems" which should be easily fixable will effectively keep people from voting? The more I read about this stuff happening, the less I trust that we’ll ever have a real election again.
I thought that if one voted absentee, that meant that your vote would be counted as a paper ballot. NO! Not in Ohio. Someone takes your absentee ballot and enters your choices into a voting machine! isn’t that against the law because then your vote is no longer secret ?
If you haven’t OD’d on voting machine calamities, have a peek over at http://www.blackboxvoting.org where there are shocking transcripts of CA Sen. Debra Bowen’s questioning of the voting machine ITAs (2 of the 3 companies that supposedly "test"–coff coff– the voting machines sold in this country).
Bowen’s questioning is brilliant. She comes across as sympathetic and understanding in her manner, while underneath she’s informed, persistent, and not giving an inch.
The incompetence, ineptitude and collusion (in my opinion anyways) is breathtaking. Ditto for NASED, the FEC and the EAC who participated in the system of having vendor-paid inspection that ONLY looks at things on their cosy, mutually-agreed checklist, but ignores anything else. (Plus they all turn a blind eye even when they don’t catch the things on the blessed checklist.)
Funny thing is that the ITA’s don’t realize when they’re in a hole and they just keep digging. . .