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By Kim Zetter
06:21 PM Nov. 02, 2004 PT
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The National Protection Coalition, composed of several nonpartisan groups that include the Electronic Frontier
Foundation and Verified Voting, reported Tuesday afternoon it had received more than 600 calls from voters complaining
about problems with e-voting machines around the country. A separate group, Common Cause, reported receiving 50,000
calls, though not all of them were related to voting technology. Both groups had established toll-free phone lines for
voters to report problems.
The National Protection Coalition received 80 reports of problems in New Orleans where machines made by Sequoia Voting
Systems failed to start on election morning, resulting in voters being turned away from polls because election officials
didn't have a back-up plan. By late afternoon some machines still had not booted up. . .
In Florida, where George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election by only 537 votes, 10 touch-screen voting machines
failed at precincts in Broward County. Voters in Florida and Texas complained about calibration problems with
touch-screen machines. Problems occurred when voters touched the screen next to one candidate's name and an "X" appeared
in a box next to another candidate's name. The Election Protection Coalition also received more than 32 reports from
various states that spread across all the top e-voting brands made by Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, Hart Intercivic and Sequoia.
These problems involved e-voting machines that appeared to record votes correctly when voters touched the screen, but
indicated a different selection on the review screen before voters cast their ballot. In some cases voters had to redo
their ballot five or six times before the correct votes took. . .
Voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, reported that when they went to vote on Sequoia machines some races on their
electronic ballots were already pre-marked before they started voting. They had to ask poll workers to assist them in
removing the selections from the ballot so they could start with a clean ballot. In some cases they weren't successful
in doing this.
In Texas, voters casting straight-party tickets reported that machines cast ballots for candidates outside of their
chosen party. For example, if a voter chose to vote straight Republican, rather than automatically marking all
Republican choices on the ballot, the machine marked some Democratic choices.
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