Tipsheet

Paper Warned About the Software Company at Center of Ballot Glitches in Swing States; UPDATE: MI SOS Responds

Beth Baumann
Beth Baumann  |  November 07, 2020 10:55 AM

UPDATE:

The Michigan Secretary of State released a statement saying there was "no merit" to the glitch in Antrim County.

"The erroneous reporting of unofficial results from Antrim county was a result of accidental error on the part of the Antrim County Clerk. The equipment and software did not malfunction and all ballots were properly tabulated. However, the clerk accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results," the statement read. "In order to report unofficial results, county clerks use election management system software to combine the electronic totals from tabulators and submit a report of unofficial results. Because the clerk did not update software, even though the tabulators counted the ballots correctly, those accurate results were not combined properly when the clerk reported unofficial results."

ORIGINAL POST:

The Michigan State Republican Party on Friday revealed that a software glitch caused 6,000 Republican ballots to be counted toward Democrat's totals. The issue was eventually corrected when officials in Antrim County hand-counted the ballots, which caused their county to flip to President Donald Trump. According to the Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman, 48 of the state's 83 counties use the same software from Dominion Voting Systems.

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There are now issues arising in Georgia in Spalding and Morgan Counties after it was revealed that a software update Monday night caused voting machines to crash on Election Day.

Spalding County Board of Elections Supervisor Marcia Ridley told POLITICO Dominion Voting Systems performed an update on machines. KnowInk, which makes electronic poll books to sign voters, also created an update. Both are something that is out of the norm, Ridley said.

"That is something that they don’t ever do. I’ve never seen them update anything the day before the election,” Ridley explained, saying she had no idea what was in the update. 

Dominion Voting Systems said the software had no impact in Georgia.

“Re Gwinnett – There is no evidence of any system software problem,” Kay Stimson, Dominion Voting Systems vice president of government affairs, in told The Washington Times in an email. “My understanding is that the system was hanging at certain points in processing adjudicated ballots due to a workstation set-up issue. Our technicians worked with the county to address it, and election officials moved on to re-adjudicating ballots by the next day.”

These "glitches" cause concerns, especially with close voter tallies in multiple states. The common factor: Dominion Voting Systems. The system is being used in many states across the nation, including in key battleground states, like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Florida.

The Denver Post brought up concerns about these machines earlier this year when election officials throughout the country were scrambling to make sure their machines were secure from Russian hackers ahead of November's election:

Called ballot-marking devices, the machines have touchscreens for registering voter choice. Unlike touchscreen-only machines, they print out paper records that are scanned by optical readers. South Carolina voters will use them in Saturday’s primary.

The most pricey solution available, they are at least twice as expensive as the hand-marked paper ballot option. They have been vigorously promoted by the three voting equipment vendors that control 88 percent of the U.S. market.

Some of the most popular ballot-marking machines, made by industry leaders Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems, register votes in bar codes that the human eye cannot decipher. That’s a problem, researchers say: Voters could end up with printouts that accurately spell out the names of the candidates they picked, but, because of a hack, the bar codes do not reflect those choices. Because the bar codes are what’s tabulated, voters would never know that their ballots benefited another candidate.

Even on machines that do not use bar codes, voters may not notice if a hack or programming error mangled their choices. A University of Michigan study determined that only 7 percent of participants in a mock election notified poll workers when the names on their printed receipts did not match the candidates they voted for.

...

Pivotal counties in the crucial states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina have bought ballot-marking machines. So have counties in much of Texas, as well as California’s Los Angeles County and all of Georgia, Delaware and South Carolina. The machines’ certification has often been streamlined in the rush to get machines in place for presidential primaries

Ballot-marking devices were not conceived as primary vote-casting tools but as accessible options for people with disabilities.

One of the most interesting aspects of this, as pointed out by NOQ Report, is that Dominion Voting Systems has machines in more than one-third of the United States. They never had a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., until last year when they hired Brownstein Farber Hyatt & Schreck, a lobbying firm. One of the account's main supervisors is Nadeam Elshami, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) former chief of staff.

Whether or not this was a glitch should be investigated, especially when it comes down to swing states. Areas in which this system was used should have a hand recount so voters know their votes were tabulated correctly. A glitch in one county is probable. A glitch in multiple counties in multiple states sounds like it could potentially be a bigger systemic problem.