No Major E-Voting Problems, Huh? Then Where Are Florida's Missing Votes?

from the just-asking dept

In one of the stories we spotted yesterday about e-voting glitches, it was amusing to see (at the very, very bottom) the idea that “no major problems” were reported for e-voting in Florida. Florida and Ohio, of course, are the two places where e-voting stories have raised the most questions, and there had already been a number of reports of e-voting problems in Florida voting last week when their early polls opened. So, it looks like ABC may need to revise that “no major problems” report, as the EFF points us to a report saying that 13% of the electronic responses in Sarasota County included no vote for Congressional Representative. That means that somewhere between 8,000 to 10,000 people who voted for other things, like governor, appear to have not voted for House Representative — and no one seems to have a good explanation. It’s certainly possible that all those people decided to go “none of the above,” but it seems unlikely — especially since similar undervoting was not seen in other counties covered by the same Congressional district. Also, there were complaints all day about the e-voting machines not properly recording votes in that county. So, while people are asking for a recount… there’s nothing to recount since the machines did not record the votes. Amusingly, the EFF also notes that the very same county had a referendum on the ballot about the e-voting machines, and the people overwhelmingly voted to scrap the machines and bring back paper ballots. So what was it the press was just saying about no major glitches with e-voting?


Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “No Major E-Voting Problems, Huh? Then Where Are Florida's Missing Votes?”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
27 Comments
Sea Man says:

Don’t worry MT, anyone who whines about dems is used to being lonely. Even when its not about dems losing (i.e. votes were potentially lost for either side).

When will this madness stop? How many botched elections are needed before the election officials get the point? How many posts on Techdirt are needed? This is insane!

Jon (user link) says:

Re: Yup

In 2000, there were several areas where re-counts showed Republican wins. You don’t know about those, as they were only reported locally–they weren’t “national” news.

I guess the only way to satisfy people is to let Florida’s vote be decided by news readers–since the media reports what the readers want to hear. But make sure that the people in Florida, especially north and central Florida, don’t get their votes counted.

I agree, the voting machines are a joke. But it wouldn’t make any difference what system Florida used, it would be wrong if Republicans won. Let’s see, there was a mistake in 1 county for 1 office–yep, that means that we can throw out all the votes in Florida and claim it was Republican fraud. If there was an obvious machine error, it was caused by the Republicans.

Ajax 4Hire (profile) says:

Mr Magoo is right thou

When there were irregularities in the panhandle of Florida (both in registering votes and early news reporting due to Central Time Zone) there was little NEWS reporting.

But everyone knows about the South Florida hanging chads.

South Florida is predominately Democrat;
Florida panhandle leans toward Republican.

So, yes, the NEWS does slant the whine about voting irregularity if the whining favors democrats.

feral says:

complaints only when dems win? BS

There were plenty of complaints lodged with the election up here, and the dems did just fine. We had few hundred people across the state that I know of who were marked in the rolls as being required to cast a provisional ballot. When they did so and went down to the board of elections, officials told them they weren’t flagged in the system and should not have been required to use a provisional ballot.

There’s plenty of problems going on with electronic voting systems and databases, regardless of the winners. This is not a partisan issue, and we all need to be concerned.

Add Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

A weekly news podcast from
Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw

Subscribe now to Ctrl-Alt-Speech »
Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...