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John,
Here is all the information I
have about the 'negative' counts.
- Only the presidential totals were incorrect. All
the other races the sum of the votes + under votes + blank votes = sum of
ballots cast.
- The problem precinct had two memcory cards
uploaded. The second one is the one I believe caused the problem. They were
uploaded on the same port approx. 1 hour apart. As far as I know there should
only have been one memory card uploaded. I asked you to check this out
when the problem first occured but have not heard back as to whether this is
true.
- When the precinct was cleared and re-uploaded
(only one memory card as far as I know) everything was fine.
- Given that we transfer data in ascii form not
binary and given the way the data was 'invalid' the error could not have
occured during transmission. Therefore the error could only occur in one
of four ways:
- Corrupt memory card. This is the most
likely explaination for the problem but since I know nothing about the
'second' memory card I have no ability to confirm the probability of this.
- Invalid read from good memory card. This is
unlikely since the candidates results for the race are not all read at the
same time and the corruption was limited to a single race. There is a
possiblilty that a section of the memory card was bad but since I do not
know anything more about the 'second' memory card I cannot validate
this.
- Corruption of memory, whether on the host or
Accu-Vote. Again this is unlikely due to the localization of the
problem to a single race.
- Invalid memory card (i.e. one that should not
have been uploaded). There is always the possiblity that the 'second
memory card' or 'second upload' came from an un-authorised
source.
If this problem is to be
properly answered we need to determine where the 'second' memory card is or
whether it even exists. I do know that there were two uploads from two
different memory cards (copy 0 (master) and copy 3).
Tab
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