Bedfordtimesregister.com - Feds say Cleveland's vote-counting scanners flawed

FILE - In this Feb. 29, 2008 file photo, vote-counting scanners are shown at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections warehouse in Cleveland. After a 20-month investigation, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission says the scanners used in Cleveland since 2008 are defective and sometimes miss votes. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan, File)

Cleveland (AP) — Vote-counting scanners used in Ohio’s most populous county since 2008 are defective and sometimes miss votes, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission said after a 20-month investigation.
The agency began the investigation after an April 2010 story in The Plain Dealer reported that one in 10 machines failed certification tests required by federal law. The findings were released this week.
The Cuyahoga County elections board director, Jane Platten, told the newspaper that the scanner counts for all elections are accurate. She said the board has created safeguards to work around problems.
“The system works,” Platten said. “There are definitely problems that need to absolutely be fixed. … We verify so we are confident in that in every single election.”
The manufacturer, Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb., said it’s cooperating in the review.
“ES&S continues to appreciate the value and the important role of the EAC certification process,” the company said in a statement. “As we have stated many times, our mission is to maintain voter confidence and enhance the voting experience.”
ES&S is working on a system upgrade.
The elections board spent $12 million on scanners to replace a $21 million touch-screen system that crashed twice during the 2007 general election.
Cuyahoga County found scanner problems in tests in November 2009 and April 2010, Platten said.
In the first test, officials found that when a ballot was placed into the machine at an angle, the scanner didn’t pick up votes in the corner of a 17-inch ballot. The county now uses only 14-inch ballots to avoid the problem, Platten said.
In the second test, the machines shut down. Now, if scanners freeze during elections, the scanners are tagged and brought to the board, where workers audit the precinct to make sure no voters were lost.
In April, ES&S provided an upgrade meant to correct the problem. The commission had certified the fix, but it didn’t work, Platten said.
“We installed it, tested it, found the freeze problem wasn’t fixed and then reverted back to the earlier version,” she said. “We won’t use the version they gave us as the fix.”