Well this is about as sur­pris­ing as a sun­rise in the morn­ing:

By Brad Fried­man on 12/23/2011 2:23pm
U.S. EAC Finds ES&S Paper Bal­lot Scan­ners Used Across the Coun­try Fail to Count Votes Cor­rectly
For first time, com­pro­mised fed­eral agency admits their pre­vi­ous cer­ti­fi­ca­tion was deeply flawed...

Not to say we told ya so, but, ya know, we’ve been telling you so for years (and years.)

A new find­ing by the U.S. Elec­tion Assis­tance Com­mis­sion — a rare find­ing, first of its kind, in fact, as the woe­ful EAC has never before taken the time to inves­ti­gate and report on seri­ous fail­ures of e-voting sys­tems that it has pre­vi­ously blessed with fed­eral cer­ti­fi­ca­tion — reveals that ES&S paper bal­lot optical-scan sys­tems used in a bunch of large swing states, result in machines freez­ing dur­ing elec­tions, fail­ing to log sys­tem events cor­rectly, and, per­haps most trou­bling, bal­lots being mis­read and votes being lost entirely.

The EAC’s “For­mal Inves­ti­ga­tion Report” fol­lows on April 2010 rev­e­la­tions by the Cleve­land Plain Dealer that some 10% of Cuya­hoga County (Cleveland)‘s EAC-certified ES&S Precinct Count Opti­cal Scan­ner and Unity 3.2.0.0 tab­u­la­tor vot­ing sys­tems failed in pre-election test­ing last year.

The paper bal­lot scan­ning com­put­ers were pur­chased as a replace­ment for the 100% unver­i­fi­able Diebold touch-screen sys­tems used pre­vi­ously in Ohio’s largest county, after a mas­sive analy­sis of all of the state’s e-voting sys­tems, over­seen by for­mer Sec. of State Jen­nifer Brun­ner (D), revealed seri­ous secu­rity issues and other major flaws in the touch-screen vot­ing machines used there and in many other states.

Relat­edly, Diebold’s own paper bal­lot optical-scan sys­tem has sim­i­larly been found, in the past, to include a flaw which results in votes being lost entirely, though the EAC never issued a warn­ing about that sys­tem, to our knowl­edge, even after it led to hun­dreds of votes going uncounted in at least one elec­tion in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia (and lord only knows how many else­where that the same sys­tem is used.)

The new find­ings of the fail­ures of the ES&S op-scan sys­tem led Plain Dealer reporter/blogger Laura John­ston today to worry: “If the com­pany can’t cor­rect the flaw, the gov­ern­ment could decer­tify the machines — leav­ing Cuya­hoga and juris­dic­tions [through­out] the coun­try no way to con­duct elec­tions in a pres­i­den­tial year.”

Um, did the cit­i­zens of Cleve­land lose their eye­balls? Or the abil­ity to add 1 + 1 + 1, Ms. John­ston? Yes, there are other ways “to con­duct elec­tions in a pres­i­den­tial year.” For exam­ple, one could sim­ply count the bal­lots by hand in pub­lic, at the precinct, in front of all vot­ers, all par­ties and video cam­eras, and report the results right then and there before the bal­lots are moved any­where — just as they still do in some 40% of the towns in the “First-in-the-Nation Pri­mary” state of New Hampshire.

The flawed scan­ners man­u­fac­tured by ES&S, the nation’s largest e-voting ven­dor, are cur­rently set to be used again in 2012, not only in Ohio, but also in Florida, Illi­nois, Indi­ana, Ohio, New York and Wis­con­sin, among oth­ers states...

...

@Pterrafractyl: It looks like peo­ple are really start­ing to wake up. The Dixiecrat-ified GOP is going to have a LOT of explain­ing to do one of these days. =)