U.S. voters calling in to a toll-free number had reported more than 1,100 separate incidents of problems with electronic voting machines and other voting technologies by late Tuesday during the nationwide election.

In more than 30 reported cases, when voters reviewed their choices before finalizing them, an electronic voting machine indicated they had voted for a different candidate.

E-voting backers called the number of reported problems minor in the context of almost 50 million U.S. voters projected to use e-voting machines on Tuesday.

In a majority of cases where machines allegedly recorded a wrong vote, votes were taken away from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, or a Democratic candidate in another race, and given to Republican President George Bush or another Republican candidate, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Computers do not make mistakes, they precisely follow instructions contained in software. "Glitches" only occur if software instructions are flawed. The only way votes could have been transferred from Democratic to Republican candidates is if the software was coded to achieve this.

White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120604Madsen/120604madsen.html According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc., during 2000, [Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney] solicited him to write a program to "control the vote." At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations. [...] In 2002, Feeney asked Curtis if he could develop a touch screen voting machine "flip flop" program. According to Curtis, Feeney asked him, "Can you write a program to flip votes around on touch screen machines?" Curtis said Feeney wanted the program to merely reduce votes in heavily Democratic areas and flip Republican votes to 51 percent and keep Democrat votes to 49 percent. Curtis added that Feeney "did not want to win by a lot."

CNN changed Ohio exit poll page
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1293911

At 12:21 a.m. Kerry was up 2 among men and up 6 among women:

At 1:41a.m. the results were changed to favor Bush:

Now Kerry is down 5 among men and tied among women.

Errors plague voting process in Ohio, Pa.
http://www.vindy.com/basic/news/281829446390855.php

[Extracts]

Mahoning and Mercer — the only counties in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys to use electronic voting machines and among only a handful in Ohio and Pennsylvania with the technology — encountered a series of problems that delayed results for hours Tuesday.

The Mahoning County Board of Elections will begin an investigation immediately to find out the sources of the problems, said Mark Munroe, the agency's chairman.

Of the 16 precincts, 11 were in Youngstown, two in Boardman, one in Jackson Township, one in Craig Beach, and one in Washingtonville.

Some of the machines malfunctioned, others had problems with the personal electronic ballot cartridge placed into the machines before each vote to count the ballots, and other problems were caused by human error, Munroe said.

The human error specifically was precinct officials getting nervous or overwhelmed by the number of people voting, and then failing to properly follow protocol to count the ballots in the machine, he said.

That led to some races showing votes of negative 25 million, Munroe said.

"The numbers were nonsensical so we knew there were problems," he said.

There were similar problems at four or five other Mahoning precincts, but poll officials there were alert enough to catch the problems, and fix them, said Thomas McCabe, deputy elections director.

There were other problems with Mahoning machines. One in Boardman Precinct 44 had to be removed because the glass on top of the electronic screen was too far from the screen, making it difficult for people to use their fingers to cast ballots, Munroe said. A screen went blank on a Youngstown voter while he cast his ballot, he said.

Also, there were 20 to 30 machines that needed to be recalibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate's opponent, Munroe said.

There are a variety of reasons for that problem, including static electricity, Munroe said. Munroe said he strongly believes that the calibration issue didn't mark people's votes improperly because when a vote is cast for a candidate, their name is lit up in bright blue and the name comes up as a review of a vote before it is finalized.

About a dozen machines needed to be reset because they essentially froze.

[If static electricity caused problems then why don't touch-screen ATMs "glitch" or crash regularly?]

In Mercer County

Mercer County's director of elections said it was a computer software glitch that caused touch-screen voting machines to malfunction in about a dozen precincts Tuesday. The election board didn't finish counting ballots in Mercer until about 3:30 a.m. today.Election workers in Mercer County raced to take paper ballots to polling places in the Shenango Valley after a series of computer errors.

"I don't know what happened," said James Bennington, who had been assured Friday that all 250 of the county's touch-screen units had been checked and rechecked. The county has 100 voting precincts.

Precincts in Hermitage, Farrell, Wheatland, West Middlesex, Shenango Township and Sharon experienced the most serious machine difficulties, some from the moment the polls opened at 7 a.m. Some machines never operated, some offered only black screens and some required voters to vote backwards, starting on the last page of the touch-screen system and working back to the front page.

Some of those systems never came back on line, leaving poll workers to resort to handing out paper ballots for people to cast their votes. The county had about 2,000 paper ballots prepared in advance for emergencies, but the problem was so great that "a couple thousand more" were printed and hauled out to the precincts as they ran low or ran out of ballots.

Bennington said some precincts in Hermitage, Farrell, Wheatland, Shenango Township and West Middlesex never got their machines back on line. The end result was thousands of paper ballots that workers at each precinct had to count and add to the total votes.

Residents turned away at polls
http://theadvertiser.com/news/html/2C3B7C2C-9C87-4523-A9E6-CCC9769A2FD7.shtml

The Registrar’s office was swamped all day Tuesday with calls and visits from those who were turned away from the polls because their names were not on the rolls.

States with electronic voting machines gave Bush mysterious 5% advantage;
bloggers do the math that broadcast networks fail to follow
http://www.newstarget.com/002076.html

Is Bush trying to pull a fast one? It's not fooling bloggers over at DemocraticUnderground.com, who have put together some fascinating numbers showing that a mysterious "5% advantage" goes to Bush only in those states using electronic voting machines. Or, put another way, all the exit polls showed Kerry winning, and the exit polls asked people who they actually voted for. But strangely, the "official" count appears to have been boosted in favor of Bush.

Exit polls and ‘actual’ results don’t match; Evoting states show greater discrepancy
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=388

In Florida, Bush led exit polling by CNN’s exit polling consortium by just 5355 votes (when the exit polling information is multiplied by the actual vote). Yet he led by 326,000 in the end result. On Wednesday morning, CNN changed their exit polling to favor Bush, saying that had overweighted African American voters.

In Wisconsin, where exit polls put Kerry up seven percent, Bush has a lead of one percent, an unexplained difference of eight percent.

In New Mexico, Kerry led Bush by 3.8 percent, yet Bush leads Kerry by 3 percent in actual reported voting.

In Minnesota, where a new law sharply restricts reporters’ access to polls, Kerry led 9.6 percent in exit polling. Actual voting counts found that Bush trailed by 5 percent, with a 5 percent discrepancy favoring Bush.

Ohio, which does have paper trail capability but does not mandate receipts, had exits showed Kerry and Bush in a dead heat; in the near-final results, Bush led by three percent.

Exit polls put Kerry up by 8 percent in Michigan; actual results show Bush trailing by just 3 percent.

Nevada, which also has electronic voting – though should have mandated paper trails, had a variance of 4.2 percent. Kerry led the exit polls by 1.2 percent, while Bush led reported votes by 3 percent.

Two states with paper trails for voting were within 0.5 percent margin of error.

In New Hampshire, which uses paper ballots, exit polling was within 0.1 percent of the actual vote. Kerry led by 3 percent in exit polling, and 2.9 percent in the actual vote.

Maine, the final state for which analysis of exit polling was conducted before the AP “resampled” their data, was in the Kerry column by 7.5 percent; the end result put Kerry up 8 percent, a variance of 0.5 percent. Maine has no electronic voting.