Orange County Canvassing Board
Public Test for
January 29, 2008, Presidential Preference Primary
January 9 & 10, 2008
Present were: County Judge Mike Murphy, Chair; County Commissioner Tiffany Moore Russell; Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles; Ed Chew, Asst Orange County Attorney; Woody Rodriguez; Counsel for the SOE; Margaret Dunn, Recording Secretary; Monica Ijeoma, Recording Secretary. There were no members of the public present.
The meeting was called to order at 8:17 a.m. The meeting had been duly advertised.
The first order of business was to review the minutes from the orientation meeting of December 5, 2007. Motion made by Bill Cowles to approve, second by Tiffany Moore Russell. Unanimous approval.
Bill Cowles reported that, as of the prior day, 9,412 absentee ballots had been mailed out and that the number included the ballots automatically mailed to poll workers. He said he still anticipated a turnout in the 30 percent range. Mr. Cowles then reported that the City of Maitland’s election had been nullified by the withdrawal of a candidate but that it was too late to re-program the election and that the Maitland results would still display even though the votes no longer counted.
The next order of business was for Mr. Cowles to explain the procedures for the public test. He explained why certain precincts were chosen for testing because they would represent every possible ballot card. Mr. Cowles went on to discuss the number of precincts and pieces of hardware that would be tested and he also explained how the results from the Special Election in House Seat 32 would not be modemed but would be added by hand into the tally.
The next order of business was to identify four precincts in a random selection in order to meet the legal mandate to test a certain percentage of the machines. Precincts 605, 335, 234, and 540 were chosen by the canvassing board. Next, the canvassing board was asked to select one precinct to test on the early voting touch screen and precinct 106 was chosen. The canvassing board was also asked to select a precinct that would have the special House Seat 32 race on it and precinct 447 was selected.
The SOE staff divided up and began the testing of the Eagles (polling places), M650’s for absentees and touch screens for early voting and for voters with disabilities.
Early in the test, it was discovered that the touch screen machines had an error. The error occurred when some precincts were opened and ballots selected. The ballots would not load. Substitute touch screen tabulators were brought in, but others continued to fail. The test was halted. The test of the Eagles and the M650s proceeded, however, because there was no problem with either of those tests.
The Canvassing Board was informed of the problem and SOE staff made conjecture about some of the possible reasons for failure. The Canvassing Board authorized the SOE staff to continue to determine what the cause was and to fix it and test the touch screens once again. Attorney Woody Rodriguez discussed the law, particularly section 101.5612, Florida Statutes and what it says to do in such a situation. He suggested the canvassing board recess while testing continued. There was discussion about whether the canvassing board had to be present during the testing. It was decided that the canvassing board would recess and authorize the SOE staff to continue. The board would meet the next morning at 8:00 a.m. to review or continue with testing.
Mr. Cowles informed the canvassing board that there was one order of business that could be conducted prior to the recess. The staff had compiled a list of examples of voter intent examples using the rules from the Division of Elections. The canvassing board reviewed the examples and read the rule and voted unanimously to accept the examples and authorize SOE staff to make determinations of voter intent using the approved examples.
The board recessed at 9:54 a.m. instructing the Supervisor of Elections to post a notice on the website about the time and date of reconvening on January 10, 2008.
On January 10, 2008, at 8:10 a.m., the board reconvened. All members were present. Bill Cowles gave a report to the canvassing board about what had transpired and what the SOE staff had discovered. According to Mr. Cowles, the master flashcard, which had been used to create all the individual precinct flashcards, had either suffered an internal error or there was an error during the process of copying the flashcard for all the individual precincts. A new master flashcard had been created and tested fully. Every precinct was tested along with every ballot within the precinct. After it was determined that every ballot would initialize, the SOE staff had recreated the public test that had failed the day before. The test had gone flawlessly according to Mr. Cowles. The canvassing board was invited to review all the test results and to select more precincts for testing if it chose to do so. The canvassing board members said they were comfortable with the test results. The SOE staff then compiled the results from all equipment – the M650s for absentee results, the touch screen results from the early voting test, the results of the polling place testing of the Eagles and the touch screen machines from the polling places. The final results were reviewed and accepted by the canvassing board.
There being no further business, the canvassing board adjourned at 8:50 a.m.
Respectfully submitted by:
Margaret
Dunn, Recording Secretary
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