Electronic vote counting system invents 140,000 extra votes

Electronic vote counting system invents 140,000 extra votes: "Electronic vote counting system invents 140,000 extra votes

Oops

By Paul Hales: Tuesday 11 November 2003, 15:28
MAYBE IT WAS THE GHOST of Guy Fawkes that slipped into the software counting votes in the Lebanon, Boone County elections held on November 4, 2003. Whatever happened, as the results of the vote were being projected on to the local courthouse wall, the software registered some 144,000 votes cast.

Since there were fewer than 19,000 registered voters in the area, something was evidently amiss, resulting in a brief conflab between the county's information technology director and advisers from MicroVote, the software company that made the vote-counting software, the Indianapolis Star reports.

'I about had a heart attack,' said County Clerk Lisa Garofolo. 'It was like 144,000 votes cast,' she added, when the revised figure showed just 5,352 ballots had actually been filled in. 'Believe me,' she said, 'there was nobody more shook up than I was.' µ"