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Fw: Election problems



The following email is from Humboldt.  This is in addition to Fresno and
Marin problems.  We are developing a critical mass of failures here which
will affect references and sales.
-----Original Message-----
From: lindsey_mcwilliams_at_county-po@co.humboldt.ca.us
<lindsey_mcwilliams_at_county-po@co.humboldt.ca.us>
To: skglobal@earthlink.net <skglobal@earthlink.net>
Cc: lou_leeper_at_elec-po@mail.co.humboldt.ca.us
<lou_leeper_at_elec-po@mail.co.humboldt.ca.us>;
jmurray@humgate.co.humboldt.ca.us <jmurray@humgate.co.humboldt.ca.us>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 11:17 AM
Subject: Election problems


>Steve,
>
>We had an unusually high level of problems all day long and past closing
that
>I'd like to share with you.  Problems ran from AccuVotes not feeding
ballots to
>suddenly corrupt memory cards to widespread communications failures.  Here
are
>the highlights:
>
>Several AccuVotes that have successfully accepted ballots refused to do so
>Tuesday.  Some were brought back to life by turning them off and back on
(some
>took several restarts; a couple required restarting several times through
the
>day) while four or five required replacing in the field.  We'll test what
we can
>and, at the very least, send the known failures back to Texas.
>
>I don't know what to make of the corrupt memory cards because I hadn't seen
this
>happen before.  Cards that tested OK last week and fired up OK over the
weekend
>failed Tuesday morning.  I think these were all 32K cards.  One precinct
failed
>twice.
>
>As aggravating as touring the County following AccuVote problems was for me
(200
>miles or so driving), the ubiquitous modem failures were worse.  41
votecenters
>transmitted as planned, 27 did not.  The common refrain from precincts
calling
>in was the AccuVote going immediately from dialing to redialing without
actually
>dialing.  After we heard this several times, we had the machines brought in
for
>uploading.
>
>Attached in a ZIP file is an annotated PDF AV Status Report and copies of
the AV
>Server Log file and Poster Log file from Tuesday night.  I'm not sure how
your
>date stamping works, but 952194227 corresponds to 19:56:16 Tuesday night
when we
>started COM4.
>
>Calls came in steadily until 8:51; by then we were getting a lot of calls
from
>inspectors who couldn't transmit.  While I don't think this was the heart
of the
>problem, I think something was wrong with either COM4 or the Digiboard at
that
>port about that time.  The last successful upload on COM4 was Vcenter 250
at
>20:49:45.  The remaining successful transmissions came in on COM5 and 6.
>Looking at the AV Server Log file around 952490943 where vc250 on COM4
shows up,
>COM6 is uploading vc113, and COM5 picks up vc175 a vew seconds later.
>
>COM5 and 6 pick up two more Votecenters after that, and COM5 picks up
vc200091
>at 952492403 (21:13)and then picks up the last call from vc29 at 21:24:50
>(952493090).  I really don't know how to explain this.  Our plan is to
finish
>the election, duplicate the database, retest transmissions in the basement,
and
>then go out to the polling places and test them there.
>
>Let me know what you think.
>
>
>
>
>
>Lindsey McWilliams
>Administrative Services Director
>825 5th Street, Room 103
>Eureka, CA  95501
>707-268-2544
>707-445-7533 fax
>lmcwilliams@co.humboldt.ca.us
>
>
>

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