brennan center for justice

AccuVote TSR6; HartInterCiviceScan; PremierAccuVote TSXAccording to Wired, “[a] number of voters in severalTexas counties have been complaining that votingmachines they used to cast early votes flipped theirvotes from Democratic choices to Republican ones”when they tried to use the straight-party option onthe machines.October 2008ES&SiVotronicTexasThe problem was reported in at least seven countieswhich use several different voting systemsmanufactured by Hart InterCivic, ES&S, andPremier. “A Hart InterCivic spokesman said that atleast one of the scenarios that a voter described isn’tpossible on the company’s machines. A spokesmanfor ES&S said very few voters had complained and asfar as he knew poll workers were never able toreplicate the situation they described.” According tothe magazine, voters in jurisdictions West Virginiaand Tennessee that use the same ES&S machineshave also complained of vote flipping, though notwhen using the straight-party function. 481Jefferson County, TXAccording to CNN, voters in Jefferson County hadproblems with the electronic voting machinesflipping votes. A man reported that his mother“went to punch the selection for Obama and itflipped to McCain.”Jefferson County Clerk Carolyn Guidry told CNNthat she “received about a half a dozen calls abouttouch screen machines that were not recording voters’preferences accurately…. ‘We go out immediatelyand re-calibrate machines that [polling workers] saythey are having problems with,’ Guidry said.”Calibration, the process of identifying for themachine the point on the screen that is being touch,generally resolves the problem until repeated use ofthe machine requires another re-calibration.”“But Guidry concedes that the problem . . . issomething that needs fixing. ‘I wish we could moreor less double the space between each box [with thecandidates’ names on the touch screen],’ said Guidry.‘But the program is not designed to do that rightnow.’ Guidry also told CNN that Jefferson Countyhas asked Election Systems & Software, themanufacturer of the county’s machines, to look intomaking that change in the next iteration of theBrennan Center for Justice | 89