Franklin, Southampton votes unaffected by machine error
Published 8:41 am Friday, May 29, 2015
This past week volunteers and professionals gathered in Franklin for the final testing, certifying and sealing of the voting equipment for the June 9 Republican Party Primary Election. From left to right, Jay Overbey of Atlantic Election Services and Franklin Printing Co., Anthony King, the vice chairman of the Franklin Electoral Board, Registrar Jennifer Maynard, Democratic Party Chair Ricky Sykes and Horace Pierce, Franklin’s Electoral Board chairman. — SUBMITTED
FRANKLIN
On Nov. 4, 2014, voters in 49 localities across Virginia reported discrepancies in the behavior of their voting equipment including Virginia Beach, which had alignment and calibration issues on 27 of its machines.
While Southampton County uses the same brand of machines reported to be faulty, officials did not report any issues to The Tidewater News. Franklin uses a different system.
Voters had difficulty selecting the candidate of their choice, due to faulty calibration of the AVS WinVote Direct Recording Electronic voting machines’ touchscreens. Because this brand of voting machine was used in about 20 percent of Virginia’s voting districts, Gov. Terry McAuliffe ordered an investigation of the machine irregularities. Conducted by the Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA), the investigation concluded that not only were the machines improperly calibrated, but that the devices could be hacked with only rudimentary knowledge of computer programming. In addition, the machines have no means of recording any interference that may take place, so there is no way to determine if they have ever been tampered with in the past.
Following the conclusion of the investigation on April 14, the Virginia State Board of Elections decertified the WinVote machines, prohibiting them from use in polling stations.
In light of the findings of the VITA investigation, Southampton County will have to replace the WinVote machines with newer models, said Registrar Peggy Davis. Replacement costs will be determined at a later date.
The City of Franklin does not use WinVote machines, and therefore was not affected and Registrar Jennifer Maynard said there were no major issues. She added that one of the motherboards in the voting machines crashed during the November elections, but no votes were compromised.
Leading into the June 9 primary elections for the open Virginia General Assembly positions, both localities will go through typical logistics and accuracy testing.
“All the machines will be pulled out and each will be test-voted,” said Maynard.
The programming of each device will be run through, tested and finalized before the machines are sealed away for the next election cycle.
“This is nothing out of the ordinary,” Maynard said.
