FLORIDA Group: Errors plagued ' 04 vote

The nonpartisan watchdog group said computers logged 100,000 errors.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- An examination of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday.
Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, said the findings call into question the outcome of the presidential race. But county officials and the maker of the electronic voting machines strongly disputed that and took issue with the findings.
Voting problems would have to have been widespread across the state to make a difference. President Bush won Florida -- and its 27 electoral votes -- by 381,000 votes in 2004. Overall, he defeated John Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory.
Details
BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens group, said that it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.
Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 recalibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Recalibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said.
"I actually think there's enough votes in play in Florida that it's anybody's guess who actually won the presidential race," Harris added.