{"id":898,"date":"2004-11-05T12:56:31","date_gmt":"2004-11-05T16:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.test.bradblog.com\/?p=898"},"modified":"2007-09-13T22:39:56","modified_gmt":"2007-09-14T05:39:56","slug":"70000-votes-discovered-in-broward-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=898","title":{"rendered":"70,000 Votes &#8216;Discovered&#8217; in Broward County!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Miami Herald<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.miami.com\/mld\/miamiherald\/10103931.htm\" target=\"_blank\">now reporting<\/a> that 70,000 votes were &#8220;discovered&#8221; last night in Broward County, FL for a gambling initiative that reversed the previously announced outcome. <i>[emphasis mine, and mostly notable to those who have been following along with previously reported items]<\/i>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">Broward County corrected a computer glitch Thursday that had miscounted thousands of absentee votes, instantly turning a slot-machine measure from loser to winner and reinforcing concerns about the accuracy of electronic election returns.<\/p>\n<p>The bug, discovered two years ago but never fixed, began subtracting votes after the absentee tally hit 32,500 &#8212; a ceiling put in place by the software makers.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nThe problem was quickly traced to software in what is known as the <b>central tabulation machine<\/b>, a computer that collects data from <b>optical scanners<\/b> that read the individual mail-in ballots.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nCounty officials blamed <b>Election Systems &#038; Software<\/b>, the company that sold the machines and counting software to Broward.<\/p>\n<p>County officials say they think <b>ES&#038;S<\/b> failed to follow through on a problem that was brought to their attention two years ago, during the 2002 general election.<\/p>\n<p>ES&#038;S spokeswoman Becky Vollmer said the glitch &#8212; which limits the number of votes that can be counted in each precinct to safeguard against ballot stuffing &#8212; will be fixed in software updates they are submitting to the Division of Elections next year.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nAlia Faraj, [FL Secretary of State, Glenda] Hood&#8217;s spokeswoman, said ES&#038;S had not previously submitted any information about the counting cap in its tabulation software, which is supposed to be certified by the Secretary of State&#8217;s Office.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<b>The tabulation software was set to <i>reverse the vote count at 32,500.<\/i><\/b> It was triggered when Broward counted all 97,535 absentee ballots in one mega-precinct Tuesday night and early Wednesday.<\/div>\n<p>Hello? Connect. The. Dots.<\/p>\n<p><i>(For more on the Optical Scan oddities in Florida, and info on who ES&#038;S is, see <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/archives\/00000893.htm\" target=\"_blank\">this previous item<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Miami Herald now reporting that 70,000 votes were &#8220;discovered&#8221; last night in Broward County, FL for a gambling initiative that reversed the previously announced outcome. [emphasis mine, and mostly notable to those who have been following along with previously reported items]: Broward County corrected a computer glitch Thursday that had miscounted thousands of absentee votes, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,16],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2004","category-ess","category-florida","bb-type-bradblog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=898"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}