Alert issued over ‘vote flipping’ electronic voting machines

As if Colorado voters didn’t have enough to worry about, an alert has been issued over a high incidence of “vote-flipping” occurring on some iVotronic machines, in which voters touch the screen for their presidential candidate, only to watch the machine switch their vote to some other guy.

On Tuesday the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law sent out an alert highlighting the problem. They have sent out letters to 16 secretaries of states, including in Colorado, urging them to take precautions with the machines, including reminding voters to “carefully confirm their candidate choices on the accompanying paper receipt attached to each iVotronic machine.”

According to the Brennan Center:

Early voters in West Virginia and Tennessee have reported a high incidence of “vote flipping” on iVotronic electronic voting machines. Here, voters selected one candidate for President by touching the screen, and watched the machine switch their vote. ??16 states (Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin) currently use iVotronic voting machines, and there is a real chance that voters using these machines will experience “vote flipping” if the problem is not addressed before the election.

The iVotronic machines were among those that were decertified late last year, and later recertified by Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman after pushback from clerks and recorders across Colorado who argued it was too late to scrap the use of the electronic machines in time for the 2008 election.

According to the Colorado Secretary of State’s 2007 inventory report on voting equipment, the IVotronic machines are in use in Jefferson and Mesa counties.