Reporting on Diebold

Analysis:

While all three stations reported on the problems with the Barry county voting machines, this WOOD 8 story is the only one that looked at voting machine malfunctions beyond this particular case. In the story the WOOD 8 reporter notes that problems have been reported in Alaska, Ohio and Florida with machines made by the corporation Diebold. The reporter notes that he talked to a representative from Diebold who attributed the irregularities in each case to user error or incompatibility with other equipment. The Diebold representative is never heard form directly and the reporter does not ask any follow up questions.

Nor is much information provided about Diebold, despite the fact that they have generated a fair amount of controversy. Diebold has been at the center of a number of controversies dating back to before the 2004 election concerning problems and weaknesses in their computerized voting systems. There also was controversy surrounding Diebold’s CEO Walden O’Dell, who previous to the 2004 election had told Republicans in a fund-raising letter that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

This issue of voting machine malfunctions is, at least according to independent researchers such as Black Box voting.org or Ohio based professor Bob Fitrakis, tied into larger issues of election fraud and tampering. Despite having plenty of evidence to back up these claims of election fraud, the local news have been very reluctant to report on them, or if they do, it’s usually dismissed as partisan bickering.

Story:

WOOD 8 Newsreader – Well, election day hit a big glitch in one West Michigan county.

WOOD 8 Newsreader #2 – Brand new voting machines stopped working in Barry County. The cause is believed to be a glitch in a computer program. 24 Hour News 8 is live in Hastings now, where all the ballots had to be hand-counted. Dan…

Reporter – Yeah, that’s right. This was literally a county-wide problem. Fifteen of the sixteen townships, as well as the city of Hastings were forced to hand count their results. And this comes after a federal law required the state to dole out money, and buy new voting machines for every county in the state.

A day later, and the votes are in. Clerks dropping of results at the Barry County HQ, the last step in what turned out to be a long night. The trouble came from machines like this one–twenty-six in all in Barry County. It’s an optical scan voting machine. The ballot goes in, the machine records the vote. At the end of the night, clerks tally the final numbers and the machine prints out the results. That’s where the problem came to light.

Tom Emery (Hastings City Clerk) – The first precinct that we looked at, one candidate got zero votes, but there were ninety write-ins out of 125 votes cast.

Reporter – Forcing City Clerk Emery to do a double take.

Emery – …especially since the person who got zero votes was the person that I voted for, so I know the zero was wrong.

Reporter – Here’s a closer look in the Thornapple School Board race. The computer had both candidates with zero votes, and the total for write-ins was 35. The biggest problem, the county clerk says, was for races dealing with bond proposals.

Debbie Smith (Barry County Clerk) – To all of the printouts where there were any bond proposals showed a zero total for yes votes, and that it appears that the actual votes cast as yes were showing under the no total, and then the no total was not appearing on the tape anywhere.

Reporter – At four thousand dollars apiece, the state bought each machine for the county after federal law required all states to use the same optical system. Tuesday’s election was the first time Barry County used these particular optical scan machines. The county had used a previous model before without having any problems. Why the printouts were scrambled, for now at least, remains a mystery.

We talked with several other West Michigan election officials to see if they experienced similar problems, but all say everything went off without a hitch. We also spoke with a spokesman for the company that makes those optical scan machines, Diebold, he says the company is looking into the problem, but adds these machines are typically very reliable. Live in Hastings, Dan Bewley, 24 hour News 8.