Op-scan system adds 5,000 ghost votes to SD election

Voting System Adds Nearly 5,000 Ballots to Tally
By Kim Zetter
June 5, 2009

A software glitch in an optical-scan voting system
added nearly 5,000 ballots to the tally of a South
Dakota election this week. The error was
discovered only after the election results were
called, according to the Rapid City Journal.

The problem occurred when officials combined
tallies from optical-scan machines in three
precincts in Rapid City in Pennington County. The
tabulation software used to combine the totals
added 4,875 phantom ballots to the count. The
system indicated 10,488 ballots were cast when, in
reality, only 5,613 ballots existed, indicating
that the glitch wasn’t simply a matter of doubling
the votes.

Oddly, no one caught the problem during the
initial count. City election officials hadn’t
bothered to keep a manual tally of the number of
ballots cast as voters handed them in and they
were scanned into the machines–a procedure
designed to catch exactly such a discrepancy. It
was only after someone began to question the high
voter turnout for the small election, that
officials went back to count the ballots.

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Originally posted: Op-scan system adds 5,000 ghost votes to SD election

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