Bleary eyes wait up for Hillsborough Tally (Theresa LePore)

[Joanne98]

Bleary eyes wait up for Hillsborough tally
By BILL VARIAN and JEFF TESTERMAN
Published September 2, 2004

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TAMPA - Susan Valdes hit the sack Tuesday close to midnight, still not knowing how her bid for the school board turned out in Hillsborough's primary election.

The vote totals were stalled so long she gave up.

But she tossed and turned, and tossed some more. Then she jumped out of bed, hopped in the car with her daughter, and drove to the elections office in Brandon to find out who won.

"I just couldn't sleep," she said. "I saw the same numbers on the television over and over and thought, "My goodness.' I just thought something was up."

Something was up all right, and Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson still is trying to figure out what. He does know that sometime around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, the computer that counts votes ground to a crawl without explanation.


http://www.sptimes.com/2004/09/02/Hillsborough/Bleary_eyes_wait_up_f.shtml

[Joanne98]

1. More excuses

In interviews Tuesday and Wednesday, Johnson said he does not think Tuesday's slowdown has anything to do with his server's hardware power to handle large volumes of data. The system was tested for accuracy more than three weeks ago, he said. However, he said Wednesday the system had not been subjected to tests that simulate the heavy data load of an election. That was being done late Wednesday. Initial results indicated that some adjustments may be needed in the way the computer processes information from vote cartridges.

What a joke.

[Larkspur]

2. As a software engineer myself, volume testing is paramount

and it is inexcusable that voting machines are not required to pass volume testing. Inexcusable!

[readmylips]

3. How shameful...Venezuela didn't have any problems....

even when the votes were recounted. American the beacon of Fraud.

[Joanne98]

4. It says in the article she lost her election.

this was 6 hours ago. Remember how they said the computers would make the counting go faster. ha