City of Norfolk, VA Election Day Report

["Kerry Martin" <kerry@dieboldes.com>]

The Election went well and marked the first in a new technique of uploading results to GEMS.

 

The City of Norfolk successfully used Cellular phones in the transmission of results to GEMS.  48 of 55 precincts successfully modemed their results in using a Kyrocera model 2135 phone connected to a Kyrocera Model # TXDTA10018 data cable.  Connecting the data cable to the keypad port and the phone to the data cable is all the physical setup needed.  The software’s “Transfer Results” setup is the same as when using the nic or modem card, except the type is now “Hayes compatible on com 3”.  There were the typical bumps in the road, getting the poll workers to turn on the phones and check for coverage, but for the most part things went smoothly.  I may have photos later if the registrar can get them off her digital camera.

 

The Following are a list of problems that occurred on Election Day:

 

1. Poll workers setting the demo unit for Election and losing their Demo Voter Cards

The worker no matter how many times we go over it and hand outs we give on the proper way of setting up the demo continue to do this.  There has to be a way that the unit can be set so that the poll worker does not have to set it up.  I spoke with the registrar about a demo Spyrus unit, but she did not like the thought of the poll workers having to deal with this.

2. Card getting stuck in the card readers

We started with 11 spares at the beginning of the day.  By 1:00pm we were out of spares because of the problems with the card readers.  It came down to telling people that they would just have to limit the use of the machine as best they could.  This is obviously not a reasonable solution.  Kevin Liesner was there and observed the problems.  Hopefully he can be some help in solving this problem

3. Split precincts were not set up correctly

Unfortunately the city did not find this before they signed off on the ballot.   The precinct split that was missing from the unit was fortunately the smaller of the two in each location.   They were able to switch over to paper ballots in each location and continue voting seamlessly.  We got Accu-votes out into the precinct for counting at the end of the day, and we manually entered the info into GEMS.

4. Two Memory cards became corrupted

One card failed during the day, just after a voter cast her ballot.  The poll worker said she turned in her card and when she sent the next voter to the station it gave her the download screen.  The second card happened when trying to upload at the elections office.  In both cases I was able to look at the card and the file name had changed from “CurrentElection” to the same as if the election had been deleted.  I was able to get the results back from both cards.

 

Kerry Martin

Election Support Specialist

Diebold Election Systems

kerry@dieboldes.com

Mbl: (214) 642-9040