ES&S – the Midas Touch in Reverse

ES&S – the Midas Touch in Reverse http://www.votersunite.org/info/ESSMidasinreverse.asp
by Ellen Theisen, November 14, 2006

Toward the end of the twentieth century, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), which now supplies election equipment to 39 states, was born into a world enamored of technology — a perfect opportunity in the wide-open business of making and selling computerized election equipment. Voting integrity activists were few and far between, and election officials had no reason to resist the digitizing of election results. The field was a gold mine to be harvested.
But from the beginning, whatever opportunity ES&S touched turned into a disaster. When their M100 ballot scanners debuted in Hawaii in 1998, the machines failed so badly, ES&S had to pay over half a million dollars to settle contract disputes and recount the ballots. Simultaneously in Dallas, software bugs in their ES&S election equipment lost 41,015 ballots — one out of every eight.

Two years later, flaws in the ES&S tabulating equipment caused Venezuela to postpone "the biggest election in Venezuelan history."

Undaunted, ES&S continued selling its wares and leaving a trail of election problems in its wake — flipping votes on the screens in Arkansas; counting more votes than voters in San Francisco; giving votes to the wrong candidates in Florida, Kansas, Texas; and irretrievably losing entire ballots. In September 2002, Miami's new paperless touch screen machines, the ES&S iVotronics, lost 8.2% of the ballots in the 31 precincts that the ACLU examined — losing as many as 21% in some precincts.

Two months later, in the mid-term elections in Raleigh, North Carolina, the election director stopped using the iVotronics for early voting when they failed to record 436 ballots cast on the machines — in a single day.

So two years later, ES&S took their iVotronic software to Indiana and had it certified, but instead of installing it there, they illegally installed an uncertified version because, according to ES&S, the certified version "might not tabulate votes." A frustrated Election Commissioner Anthony Long put his finger on the heart of the problem when he asked ES&S, "Do you understand that to run an election for something to work, it's gotta count the votes?" Shortly thereafter, Indiana passed legislation providing stiff penalties for election equipment vendors who act on their own without permission of the state election commission.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Those two years brought a whirlwind of election debacles caused by ES&S equipment. In the 2002 mid-term election, ES&S ballot scanners handed the Alabama gubernatorial election to the wrong candidate in a mistake eventually caught by election officials. Their paperless touch screens continued flipping votes in Florida, locking up and shutting down in Louisiana, and providing questionable results wherever they were in use.

Their ballot scanners reversed totals in the mid-term elections in Nebraska, North Carolina, and South Dakota. And in 2003, the ES&S products continued to run amok, reversing totals in Illinois and losing ballots in North Carolina.

Off to an early start in their trail of 2004 fiascos, the iVotronics reported 134 blank ballots in a south Florida election with a 12-vote margin of victory. There was only one contest on the ballot, so if the tally is to be believed, 134 voters trekked to the polls, signed in, and decided not to vote. At that time, Florida required manual recounts for close elections such as this one, but since there weren't any ballots to recount, the machines' tally stood.

Continuing along the 2004 trail, ES&S equipment lost 189 ballots in Sarasota County, Florida; balked at accumulating votes in San Antonio; failed to count them in Lubbock; and counted candidates' votes for their opponents in several Arkansas counties.

Mid-year, a Miami election official reported that the audit log for the iVotronics, which was the only method of checking the operation of the machines, had a software bug that made the log unusable for its sole purpose — auditing.

The same story continued through the rest of the year. In addition to miscounting ballots in Arkansas, Florida, Wyoming, Michigan, and Arizona; ES&S equipment flipped votes on the screens in Texas, Ohio, and yes, Florida.

But there were also some new twists in the ES&S twister that swept the country. In LaPorte Indiana, the iVotronics recorded 300 votes in every precinct, eliminating over 50,000 ballots. In South Carolina, officials were unable to retrieve 200 votes off the memory cartridges. In Wisconsin, ES&S ballot scanners failed to count straight-party votes at all. In Nebraska, Ohio, and Washington, they added votes to the totals. And in Indiana, the iVotronics recorded more votes than voters (called "phantom votes) in some precincts, fewer ballots than voters in others.

One of the most interesting twists, however, is the "counting backwards" phenomenon that cropped up in Florida and North Carolina. For some inexplicable reason, ES&S set up its software to handle vote totals ranging from 32,000 to -32,000 — yes, negative 32,000, as if there might at some point be negative totals. And there were. As the totals in three southern counties exceeded 32,000, the software flipped into negative mode and began counting backwards.

2005 saw more of the same ... and more. Lost votes and switched votes in Florida and Mississippi, straight-party votes uncounted in Wisconsin and Michigan, phantom votes in South Carolina and Florida. And even a new thing — the county commissioner's race simply didn't appear on some —not all, but some — of the electronic ballots in a Broward County, Florida election.

Onward to 2006, as ES&S equipment continues counting votes backwards, leaving others uncounted, and adding votes cast by phantoms. The company continues installing outdated software — in West Virginia this time. The ballot programming they provide for the 2006 primary fails to count the votes properly in dozens of jurisdictions across many states.

And new problems continue to arise. Flawed programming gives voters the wrong electronic ballots, the company misprints paper ballots and supplies faulty memory cartridges to its customers, and customers discover that the tally software refuses to combine vote totals from iVotronics and ballot-scanners.

As things heat up with the frantic rush to comply with federal law before the November 2006 elections, ES&S expands its dysfunctionality. The company violates contracts — refusing to provide ballot programming services in Arkansas and California on the one hand, and inspiring the Oregon Secretary of State to file a lawsuit on the other. ES&S fails to deliver equipment and services as agreed — inspiring legal complaints in both Indiana and West Virginia.

Meanwhile, ES&S manages to turn a goldmine into a disaster as it delivers faulty AutoMARKS — a ballot-marking device marketed by ES&S and endorsed by voting integrity activists — to customers such as Wyoming and New Mexico while it fails to deliver them on time in other states.

With news reports of ES&S failures in at least 15 states in the November 2006 election, it's difficult to keep up now with all the elections ES&S has turned into chaos, so let's skip right to the latest fiascos.

Three races hang in the balance in Benton County, Arkansas. A week after the election, outcomes have shifted three times, but reports of more than 100% turnout in some precincts make officials leery of the results, and even ES&S has trouble figuring out the true totals. Will even the winners believe the final results?

And there's more! In Waldenburg, Arkansas, a mayoral candidate who voted for himself on an iVotronic finds that the machines reported no votes at all in his column. Meanwhile, officials in Sarasota County, Florida speculate about why 18,000 votes for the U.S. House District 13 race don't show up on the tally — in a contest with a 368-vote margin. One vote out of 36 lost in Waldenburg; 18,000 out of 140,000 missing in Sarasota. Different in degree, but not much different in kind.

ES&S breaks contracts, installs illegal software, fails to deliver equipment on time, delivers faulty equipment, and misprograms ballots. Their equipment heats up, breaks down, operates badly, and fails to operate at all. Every product the company makes malfunctions in its own special way — miscounting votes, adding votes, subtracting votes, doubling votes, losing votes, mis-scanning ballots, and/or flipping votes from one candidate to another.

ES&S products fail again and again at the one thing they are supposed to do — count votes correctly. With hurricane ES&S gathering speed in every election, we can only wonder ... why are their systems still in use, and what will be next?

An extensive compendium of problems with ES&S election equipment, with links to media articles, can be found here
http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp?sort=date&selectstate=ALL&selectvendor=ESS&selectproblemtype=ALL
and here.
http://www.votersunite.org/info/ES&Sinthenews.pdf


The problem with touch screens as vote counters
is that they can be easily manipulated.
~ Mike Devereaux
ES&S Sales Representative

owned part of at the time of the election.

2006
www.flcv.com/eirstss6.html


2004
www.flcv.com/summary.html
click on touch screen problems

keep up with Diebold/ES&S's nefarious deeds. Thanks for posting, Philb!

Some thoughts...

Even as we speak, Senator Diane ("You too can learn to love the Corporate Rulers") Feinstein, who will head the Senate committee on elections--and, I must, say, the entire establishment of the Democratic Party, along with her--is preparing to REWARD these Bushite corporations, for their royal fuckup of our elections, by giving them billions and billions of dollars in MORE electronic voting contracts, to "fix" all of the problems that they themselves have created, with their crapass, insecure and extremely insider hackable voting systems, their lavish lobbying of public officials, their "culture of secrecy," their fast-tracking of untested, unauditable systems, and their corporate lawyers writing our election laws. They will now charge us billions of more dollars for printers (to remedy unauditable, unrecountable touchscreens), for "upgraded" printers (when their first efforts fail), for replacing the touchscreens (when all printers fail), for "upgrades" of every kind (from deliberate "lemons" to the barely functional), and, of course, for more "servicing" (re notorious "machine breakdowns" and miscounts).

It's kind of like Halliburton and Iraq. The Bushites destroy the country's infrastructure, and then pay the vice president's corporation billions and billions of unaccountable, no-bid dollars to fix that which they have broken. And when they don't fix it, they get billions more to try harder. And they're so good at not fixing things, they get the first no-bid contract out of the Katrina disaster as well--where dead bodies are still floating around and not a whole lot has been fixed, as yet.

Smell a pattern here?

The Chaos Theory of Bushism

Yup, I'm working on it. It's an "explains everything" theory (--the unified theory of Bushism). Their intentions--or rather, the intentions of those who are actually pulling the strings--are never constructive--nor even positive, from their own point of view--no matter what their frontmen say. Keeping western civilization safe from Saddam Hussein? Stopping the proliferation of WMDs? Keeping WMDs out of the hands of madmen? Gifting the Iraqis with democracy? Dominating and bringing order to the Middle East, and insuring an oil supply that the western world can choke itself to death with, as the planet succumbs CO2 poisoning--while making windfall profits? Winning the "clash of civilizations"? Re-establishing the Holy Roman Empire? Bringing the perps of 9/11 to justice? Re-militarizing the U.S. (--getting people to forget "the lessons of Vietnam")? Keeping America "safe from terrorists"? Stabilizing Iraq? Ending the war in Iraq? Creating peace in the Middle East? Inspiring reverence for Jesus? Promoting the conservative agenda (ahem...small government, fiscal responsibility, old-time values of honesty and truthfulness, heterosexual sex....)?

Whatever. They do not intend these things--ever, at any point. What they intend is CHAOS. Because they really have only one, short-term goal: LOOT EVERYTHING IN SIGHT, PLUS LOOT ALL OF AMERICA'S FUTURE WEALTH, WITH A $10 TRILLION WILD RIDE ON AMERICA's CREDIT CARD!

It's a frat party. It's a "lost weekend." It's a binge of epic proportions. It has no goal other than shoveling money into secret accounts in the Cayman Islands. And chaos creates opportunities for looting. The chaos in Iraq (boffo looting opportunities); the chaos in our election system (looting opportunities for Bush's buds at Diebold and ES&S, in exchange for certain favors, like keeping the Looter In Chief in office); chaos in Louisiana (nature's chaos helped along by neglect, becomes backup plan for Halliburton); in Afghanistan (as in Iraq, keep the war going as long as there are profits to be made from "terrorism"--arm all sides); chaos in whatever Latin American countries they can militarize and loot (not many, these days)--and disorder and dysfunction of every kind--for instance, in the US military and intelligence establishments (through purges of the people who are doing their jobs, and promotion of those who aren't--the chaos of anger, rebellion, toadyism and torn loyalties); chaos in state governments (defunding social programs, imposing the hated "no child left behind" policy on teachers, depriving states of their National Guards, their buds at Enron looting California's entire $9 billion budget surplus); chaos in the medical system and in the fight against AIDs--all these things create opportunities for looting. That is why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co. do not seem to give a damn whether government, or even their own purported policies, are working right. They really DON'T give a damn. The programs and policies are window-dressing--and are a means of doling out favors to other greedy people and entities.

There is no philosophy behind anything they do. (Except maybe Rumsfeld's "philosophy"--articulated upon the looting of Baghdad: Freedom = the freedom to loot.) They are not conservatives. They are not NeoCon ideologues. They are THIEVES. Even Neo-Conism was window-dressing.

So we have--not a failed war policy, and not a failed administration--but rather a den of master thieves, who were pretending to HAVE policies, and were pretending to run the government (pretending sometimes to their own staffs, pretending to sincere NeoCons, pretending to the rest of us, the people of this country, and to the world). And their darker policies--torture, spying, detention--were just for covering up what they were really doing: stealing us all blind.

This may be why the blather on TV sounds so hollow (and always has). Karl Rove shoves out all the "talking points," which they dutifully repeat, but it's all about nothing. Every "talking point" disguises one thing or another that they need, in order to keep the bank vault open, to steal yet more of our money. The more sophisticated of the corporate liars--the NYT, for instance--consciously provided front page cover for the major looting expedition of Iraq, all in great detail, all picked up by the other newspapers, and all a bunch of hooey from first to last. They're all getting a little nervous lately--because circulation is dropping, as people start seeing through the ugly emptiness of it all. Now they're playing the game of, "Gee, how did all this turn out so disastrously?"

The war profiteering is not restricted to Bushites, or to Republicans. But it was their idea, and is their major purpose--enriching themselves--and if others want to hang onto the ratty sails of the biggest, ugliest, most destructive pirates' ship ever launched, fine. Welcome aboard. Here's your cutlass.

Electronic voting, however--run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations--would seem to be a more permanent type of banditry--that involves not just billions in contracts and then billions in contracts to repair shoddy work, but continued stolen (or craftily shaped) elections forevermore, so that, whatever limited kinds of wealth Americans are able to create for themselves, after all this massive looting, this, too, can be stolen in the future. It's a kind of permanent open port for the pirates to return.

And that's where groups like Common Cause, and Senators like Diane Feinstein, come in--to keep the door open. They'll dress the door a bit--with "paper trails" and flimsy and illusory locks. But hackers in corporate pay will easily get around it all. And our nation will remain, in essence, owned by the worst brigands the world has ever seen. Brigands who can elect themselves President.

That is, unless the American people rise up, and throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' where they belong.

malfunctioning machines all over the country, long lines, millions unable to vote, manipulation, touch screen switching, disappearing votes, voter suppression, official and poll worker malfeasance and misfeasance, systematic illegal dirty tricks, etc.

Look at the voter reports of their experience in the swing states and many other states, especially in minority precincts-
which virtually all were horrendous. Why do they put up with such???

doesn't include switching, other kinds of glitches from the huge list
http://www.votersunite.org/info/mapVoteSwitch.pdf

Details
http://www.votersunite.org/info/Vote-Switchinginthenews.pdf

Details sorted by states
http://www.votersunite.org/info/Vote-Switchinginthenews-byState.pdf


There were Problems with ES&S touch screens in most states in 2006

I assume that you might notice that my list is likely larger that that Of VotersUnite, since they are just one of my
sources. I also have the EIRS info and other sources. But VotersUnite makes a good starting point, have the biggest single compilation commonly referenced of machine problems.

I agree with you. "Fixing" the problem with these machines can only be accomplished by getting rid of them. Fixing the problems only feeds the beast, and it's already quite obese.

I've been thinking about chaos as it relates to our messes, and it really does add up -- Enron used chaos too, to shield its misdeeds. Its employees were constantly changing jobs, and its divisions were constantly being reorganized -- the better to hide losses from analysts and shareholders.

Do you ever publish at OpEd News, Peace Patriot? I would bet they would publish that.

Send it to counteveryvote@gmail.com

pretending that a major part of world problems are due to "terrorism" and
letting a pretend "war on terror" be fought that was mainly for domestic political purposes,
an issue to win elections on when it was clear that he was out of step of dealing with the real problems

global warming, global mercury pollution, population growth, declining fisheries and reefs and sea grasses, fuel dependancy, rapid increases in debt, trade deficits, and transfer of wealth from us to them as a result of fuel imports and military campaigns we can't afford, middle east ethnic and religious differences and poverty and maldistribution of resources and education, etc.
None of these can be resolved by a "war on terrorism". When are we going to declare the war on terrorism over, and
get on to resolving the real problems facing the U.S. and others?

There has been a lot of well-deserved attention given to Diebold. All of these machines need to be booted out with the trash, and refunds delivered back to the people whose voices were stolen with their use.
Nice report. Thanks.