Hart InterCivic Voting Scanner User Warning
Voting System: Hart InterCivic Ballot Now, using Kodak i800 Series Scanner
Problems Found by Election Officials: During a hand recount of ballots counted in Yakima County, Washington, it was discovered that 24 properly marked
ballots had been counted as undervotes and had not been tallied. An investigation was carried out by Hart InterCivic
employees who looked at the ballot images. The examination revealed that 24 ballot images contained a white vertical
line spanning the entire length of the ballot. The line ran through the left portion of all option boxes in the 4th
column of each ballot.
Hart reported that since the white line “whited out” a portion of each option box, Ballot Now was unable to detect at
least 90 percent of each “target box” and therefore classified each contest in the 4th column of each ballot as a
Damaged Contest. In this case, the 4th column included contests for Congress, Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of
State, and State Treasurer.
Hart also confirmed that during processing of the batch in question, the option to Autoresolve Damaged Contests was
selected. Consequently, Ballot Now (in Autoresolve mode) confirmed and recorded the damaged contests as undervoted.
In another reported incident, officials in Boulder County, Colorado discovered that when a fold in the ballot covers an
option box, the machine may misread the ballot. Of 429 test ballots read, seven (1.6%) were misread because of such a
fold.
Solutions: The Hart representative recommended a regular cleaning program for the scanner during heavy use periods. The “Kodak
Series i800 Scanners User’s Guide” recommends thoroughly cleaning the scanner after every 8 hours of use. According to
the troubleshooting section of the manual, the white line that caused a miscount of ballots in Yakima County can be
directly attributed to dirty imaging guides. VotersUnite agrees with the Hart representative but, because people’s votes
are involved we recommend a thorough cleaning more often than recommended by Kodak.
The Boulder County problem may not be as simple to fix. The county is proposing that all ballots be inspected, and any
with a crease through an option box will be individually resolved.
In all cases, VotersUnite strongly recommends that the “Autoresolve Damaged Contests” option not be selected. Any
damaged or questionable ballots must be inspected by an election worker to determine why the system identified the
contest as damaged.
VotersUnite also points to both of these situations as substantial evidence for why audits MUST be conducted by hand
counting a percentage of the original paper ballot batches and comparing that tally to the computer’s tally of scanned
images of those ballots and to the total from the tabulator.
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John Gideon
Information Manager
VotersUnite! is a national non-partisan organization dedicated to fair and accurate elections. It focuses on
distributing well-researched information to elections officials, elected officials, the media, and the public; as well
as providing activists with information they need to work toward transparent elections in their communities.