SC Voting Machines Prone to Problems, Warns USC Computer Science Chairman

There have already been a record high number of voter registrations and absentee voters in South Carolina, so a record-high turnout on Election Day is likely. But will your vote register for the candidates you want?

"Both times I have voted this year, in the primary and in the June election in Richland County, the machine was not properly calibrated and names lit up that were not the names that I touched. So I think people need to be very careful when they vote," says Dr. Duncan Buell, chair of the University of South Carolina's Department of Computer Science & Engineering. He says the voting machines South Carolina uses can fail, either through software problems or programmer mistakes.

"In Arkansas, using iVotronic machines very similar to, although perhaps not necessarily exactly the same model as what we use in South Carolina, there were votes recorded in one part of the primary election for people who weren't even on the ballot but were on the ballot in a different jurisdiction, which clearly has to have been somebody misconfiguring the ballot image," Dr. Buell says.

A recent report by the Brennan Center for Law and Justice, Common Cause and the Verified Voting Foundation, says South Carolina is one of 10 states "least prepared" for dealing with voting system failures and one of 10 states that's either "inadequate" or "needs improvement" in at least three of the four voting system security categories.

Dr. Buell says, "We have no ability in South Carolina to count anything except what gets stored in the memory chips of the voting machines. There is no paper record. There is no auxiliary record."

But the State Election Commission says your vote is safe and will be counted accurately. Spokesman Chris Whitmire says, “South Carolina has used this voting system in now hundreds of elections, and in every election the voting system itself has performed exactly how it’s supposed to. There’s never been a vote lost.”

There were problems in Horry County during the Republican primary in January. Some of the machines would not start, but it turns out it was because test votes had not been cleared from the machines. Whitmire says that was human error and the machines did exactly what they were supposed to. You wouldn't want them to start with votes already on them.

He says the Brennan report is by groups who have a specific agenda: requiring a voter verifiable paper ballot. “It’s not only unfair, because our history shows that we have conducted good elections and we always have conducted good elections with this voting system, but it’s also irresponsible, because it undermines public confidence in elections, and that’s very important,” Whitmire says.

Dr. Buell says he's not suggesting that anyone not vote. In fact, he encourages everyone to vote. But be sure to look at your selections as you push them to make sure the correct name is lighting up, and look over your selections carefully on the review screen that comes up before you push the "vote" button. "I intend to review the ballot carefully," he says.