brennan center for justice

November2004November2004UnilectPatriotDiebold (Modelunknown)North CarolinaNorth Carolinavoting machines in at least two precincts did notdisplay one of the races on the ballot. One electionofficial estimated that the error affected at least 600voters. Because there was no paper record, it wasimpossible to determine how many votes were lost. 442Carteret County, NCThe Associated Press reported that about 4,400 voteswere lost in the election for state agriculturalcommissioner. On election night, 3.3 million ballotswere cast and the Republican candidate led hisDemocratic opponent by 2,287 votes. The touchscreenDREs that had caused the problems did nothave a backup system, making the lost votesirrecoverable. With almost twice as many votespermanently erased as were needed to win theelection, a contentious legal battle ensued, and onlyended three months later when the contestingcandidate decided to concede the election. 443Gaston County, NCAccording to local news media, 12,000 early voteswere unrecorded in the initial tally due to an“interrupted download error” that occurred duringthe transfer of election data to the tally server. 444November2004November2002November2002Fidlar AccuVote2000 ESES&S:Optech III-PES&S:Optech III-PEagleNorth CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth CarolinaA later review by the Charlotte Observer found thatthe number of voters who signed in at the pollsdiffered from the number of votes tallied in over 60percent of the county’s precincts. 445Franklin County, North CarolinaAccording to the Associated Press, Fidlar opticalscanners recorded democratic straight-ticket votes asstraight-ticket votes for the Libertarian party.Correcting the error changed the outcome of acongressional race. 446Chatham County, NCAccording to the News and Observer, machineprogramming error caused all straight-ticketRepublican votes to go to the Libertarian candidatein N.C. House District 54. 447Wayne County, NCThe News and Observer reported that a programmingerror caused machines to skip several thousand partylinevotes, both Republican and Democrat.Brennan Center for Justice | 81