Some More Answers from BOEE
Dan Murphy, spokesperson for the Board of Elections and Ethics, was kind enough to pick up his phone a few minutes ago and chat with LL about a few outstanding issues from yesterday's primary.
Can all of the electoral troubles be traced to Precinct 141?
Yes, according to the statement distributed by Murphy (pictured) earlier this afternoon. The board claims a single cartridge from an optical-scan machine there registered the faulty results.
Is that the precinct which was outstanding until a few minutes ago? Or is it another one?
There are no outstanding precincts, Murphy says. The official Web results were updated at 4:24 p.m., to reflect a full 143 precincts reporting, but the vote totals did not change; the results issued at 12:47 a.m. were complete. The issue with the precinct that seemed to be missing, he explains, has to do with cartridges issued to Precinct 4. That polling place, at the West End Library in Ward 2, was issued three voting machines---two optical scan, one touch-screen---with one cartridge for each. One of the three cartridges was initially not returned to BOEE headquarters for the count, but it was eventually retrieved and found to contain no votes. "It's very likely that machine was not even used," Murphy says. The 12:47 a.m. totals, though complete, did not register 143 of 143 precincts because of the missing, empty cartridge.
What exactly was the problem at the Reeves Center? Were the ballots rescanned? Or was data from the scanner re-downloaded?
Murphy could not say whether the ballots had to be re-scanned or not. He said he would provide an answer to LL. As for what exactly went wrong with the cartridge, Murphy declined to say, pending an investigation by the board and the system's manufacturer.
Why weren’t the preliminary results given a once-over? Even a cursory glance would have turned up irregularities.
According to the board's statement, "it is the Board's standard practice to generate unofficial results reports, and to thereafter conduct an internal audit process to verify the accuracy of the results contained in these reports. During this process, it was determined that one defective cartridge caused vote totals to be duplicated into multiple races on the summary report issued by our office. The Board immediately caught and addressed this error, as is reflected in the last unofficial results report issued on Election Night."
What was being discussed in the closed-door meeting that lasted most of the day? Who is in the meeting?
"What we were doing was looking at all the numbers, precinct by precinct," he says. The meeting was attended by the board and its staff only, Murphy says; no one from the mayor's office or from the attorney general's office was there.
Photo by Darrow Montgomery
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4:27 pm
Why are the absentee and provisional numbers all 0? Are the absentee ballots added into the other numbers, or still pending, or what?
5:30 pm
Don't know about provisionals (those are ballots filled out by folks who believe they had registered, but did not show up on precinct voter rolls---they have to be certified afterward). As for absentees, they had to be postmarked yesterday, and they need to be received by 9/19, which is the day all special, challenged and absentees are scheduled to be counted. DCBOEE should know how many absentees were issued, but I don't have that figure.
Historical note: In 2006, there was an election day turnout of 103,476 (42,421 this year, with no mayoral race). 3,316 absentees were cast (1.03%) and 2,989 provisionals (0.93%).
9:52 pm
Thanks, Mike.
10:30 pm
What about early absentee voting in person at the DC BOEE. Shouldn't those have shown up in the absentee voting totals?
10:24 am
Great reporting, you guys! If more reporters would develop strong, effective follow up questions like you did, we'd be farther along right now. It is interesting that with the Sequoia optical scan systems, votes appear to have been double-counted in Indian River County, Florida also; this happened in 40 precincts. It's anyone's guess, but votes may have been double-counted in Palm Beach County as well; there are 3,500 ballots missing and the internal controls were so bad there that they don't seem to be able to figure out whether it's a double count or missing ballots.
Kudos for the excellent articles. Will tuck in a headline for your work on Black Box Voting today.
10:48 am
Absentee votes, whether submitted by mail or in person, are counted on Sept. 19.
12:28 pm
For the last few election cycles, my precinct--number 2--has been located at the GWU Smith Center. In those contests, Precinct 2 has had the lowest turnout citywide, despite being located in the immediate vicinity of thousands of voting-age college students. Tuesday was no exception.
At 7:55 pm on election day, I went in to get the final vote count from one of the poll workers. She had tracked the votes by party and further broken it out by paper and electronic ballot.
The current DCBOEE Precinct 2 online results continue to differ (on the low side) from the numbers I was given. There was one Statehood-Green Party vote that also does not show on the DCBOEE site.
Early in the day a neighbor--a PhD in statistics who has taught all over the world--went in to vote and didn't emerge for nearly 30 minutes. When he finally appeared, he related that he had tried to vote touch screen, gave up in frustration after several tries, and did a paper ballot.
About 5 minutes into our chat afterward, a pollworker came chasing out in a panic because they had forgotten to get him to sign the book before he voted!!!
When he emerged the second time he said, statistically speaking, we should not be using touch screen/electronic technology once every 2 or 4 years to do voting. It's one thing to be using e-mail and cellphones everyday but the voting technology is too complex and prone to failure.
In my opinion, every touchscreen ballot citywide in Tuesday's election is suspect and needs to be verified.
Further, there was a special grant project for voter accessibility going on throughout election day--we had at least five workers, including a young pregnant woman, visit Precinct #2 for accessibility. Around 5:00 pm, one of the workers (from Chicago) came over to chat with me.
I mentioned how bad the accessibility was at Precinct #4--the West End Library--and he agreed. His project had arranged for DCBOEE to have an additional machine set up on the first floor and when he went to check it at 5:30 pm on Monday, it was nowhere to be found.
Ironically, we were told late Monday evening at the BOEE that because of a missing cartridge, that West End was the non-reporting precinct, something City Desk confirmed late yesterday along with the news that DCBOEE had found the third cartridge with nothing on it. This is an outrage and should also be brought to light--clearly, the first floor station was never set up.
At the LEAST, there should be (1) a hand recount of the paper ballots; (2) a total voter count including every voter that signed in and voted, and (3) a check of the number of electronic totals against signature totals minus paper ballots--in every Ward 2 precinct.
P.S. Here we are in our nation's capital with some of the wealthiest individuals and neighborhoods in the City located in Ward 2 and with less than 9% of registered Democratic voters showing up to the polls. If ever there was a case for not giving DC the vote, this fiasco is it.
12:50 pm
"If ever there was a case for not giving DC the vote, this fiasco is it."
That's a profoundly un-American attitude, depriving citizens of their rights in order to somehow punish the bureaucrats. Presumably Florida and Ohio and all the other places that have had voting problems deserve to have their statehood revoked?
1:53 pm
"If ever there was a case for not giving DC the vote, this fiasco is it."
Nope. Those stats don't argue against DC Home Rule (or representation, I'm not sure which one you're talking about), they argue against party primaries.
Spending public money on elections closed to anyone but party members, which exist simply to advantage the affiliated over the unaffiliated: That's un-American.
2:21 pm
The District can't run an election, can't run schools, can't police the streets, & can't govern itself. DC will never receive full home rule, & will never receive representation in Congress. DC was born a plantation, & will remain a plantation forever.
DC can't even get a slogan right - it's NO taxation without representation, not "taxation without representation". Ask someone out of state about your license plate sometime - 70% think it means we're bragging that we tax them but don't represent them.
Best of all, DC's residents don't care about not having rights. If people here cared, we could have full self rule in about two weeks; since we don't care, no vote.
Only a delusional psychotic would think DC will ever be able to govern itself. In the words of the immortal Bob Knight, don't fight it, lay back & enjoy it.
2:36 pm
"...depriving citizens of their rights in order to somehow punish the bureaucrats."
Let me clarify my comment, which was not about the "bureaucrats" but about what I perceive to be a pathetic lack of involvement on the part of the electorate/citizenry, particularly in Ward 2.
According to the latest D.C. BOEE Ward 2 election day results (which have changed each time I revisit the site), the total number of Ward 2 registered voters eligible to participate in Tuesday's election was 33,685. Of that total, 5,334 voted for an average turnout of 15.83%.
Add to this the dysfunctionality and errors outlined in my original posting--which MUST be addressed and corrected--and it paints a pretty sad picture of "Democracy" in our nation's capital.
6:14 pm
No offense Elizabeth in Foggy Bottom, but you might want brush up on elections elsewhere before condeming the District. Seven states and the District held primaries on Tuesday, here's how their turnout breaks down:
New York, less than 15 percent
Minnesota 10.9 percent
Vermont less than 10 percent (SoS says official numbers aren't avail. yet, but that's what she's predicting)
New Hampshire 15 percent
Rhode Island 7 percent
Delaware 22 percent
Wisconsin less than 10 percent
Also, simply because your precinct is close to GWU does not mean that you should have more voters. Many college students choose not to register in their college towns but remain registered in their home states. Agree with the practice or not, it happens everywhere and frankly, if I were from Ohio but went to the school in D.C. I would stay registered in Ohio.
And finally, as for the mistakes that occurred in D.C. on Tuesday. There is no doubt that they are unacceptable, however the District is not alone with these types of problems and yet no one questions the ability of those other states to have representation in Congress.
10:51 pm
Signatures on absentee and provisional ballots must be verified as belonging to properly registered voters before they are added to any tally. Verified ballots are then added to the tally that is enventually certified by the governing authority and labled as "certified".
Absentee and provisional statistics are available as "issued" and finally "counted" leaving percentages of each.
11:11 pm
Great reporting!
You asked the key person the key questions, and wrote it up in "just the facts" question and answer format.