Probe blames voting machine manufacturer for double-counting votes in ’22 election

One of the nation’s largest voting machine manufacturers gets most of the blame for a 2022 election tabulation malfunction that caused some votes in four Monmouth County municipalities to be counted twice, an independent investigation ordered by the state attorney general’s office has found.

The mistake led to the reversal of election results in an Ocean Township school board race after the apparent winner had already taken office.

Election Systems & Software (ES&S) failed to apply a software patch to prevent the tabulation of ballots more than once and then sent a customer relations manager who lacked the training to remedy the problem.

Former Attorney General Peter C. Harvey, who conducted the investigation, said that “elections in New Jersey are secure.”

“Voting equipment used in Monmouth County is protected from outside intrusions, including by any vendor personnel, Harvey said.  “In our investigation, we discovered no evidence suggesting that the miscount resulted from any fraudulent or willfully wrongful conduct by any Monmouth County election official or personnel, ES&S employee, or any other person.”

The probe, Harvey said, “did not discover evidence of double counting of ballots on ES&S’s elections system before or after the November 2022 Election in Monmouth County or elsewhere.”

“ES&S dispatched a Customer Relations Manager to ‘uninstall’ and ‘reinstall’  election software on Monmouth County’s election server,” said Harvey.  “The Customer Relations Manager had no software or hardware technical expertise.”

Instead, the employee was provided incorrect instructions over a mobile phone.  The correct engineering change (EC) order was never installed.

The Monmouth County Board of Elections loaded flash drives to tabulate write-in votes; some districts were counted twice.

“If the ECO had been installed, the ballots on those flash drives would not have been counted more than once,” Harvey said.  “Only the ballot images with write-in vote information would have been loaded. Because the ECO had not been installed, however, the ballot results on six flash drives were loaded into the election software and tabulated (counted) twice.”

Monmouth County, the report says, had considered upgrading to a newer election software version but chose to wait until after the 2022 general election.

“The newer version of ES&S’s election software would have automatically installed the ECO component,”  Harvey stated.  “We did not find evidence demonstrating that, before the November 2022 Election, Monmouth County personnel were aware that the newer version of the election software automatically installed the ECO.”

The county has since upgraded its software, and the version of the ES&S software used last year is no longer in use.   A July special election was run from a standalone laptop since uninstalling and reinstalling the software didn’t fix the slowness issues on the county’s election server.

In the future, Harvey wants election officials to conduct pre-election logic and accuracy testing,  run election night reports to confirm the accuracy of vote tabulation, require vendors to use only fully trained personnel, and conduct additional pollworker training.   Counties also need communication plans to inform election officials and the public correctly.

Among Harvey’s recommendations is for county Boards of Elections and Superintendents of Elections to get their own legal representation rather than use the attorney general’s office.

“Representation of these entities from outside the Attorney General’s Office would enable the Office to further focus its efforts on enforcing New Jersey’s civil rights laws,” Harvey said.

“These reports are a public service, and we are reviewing them carefully as we work to ensure free and fair elections in New Jersey,” said Attorney General Matt Platkin.  “I am proud that our elections in New Jersey are safe and secure, and we are committed to ensuring that remains the case.”

Harvey was assisted with the investigation by Emma Ellman-Golman and Basil Williams from his firm,  Patterson, Belknap, Webb, and Tyler.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting the right to vote and to ensuring that our elections in New Jersey remain safe and secure,” said Sundeep Iyer, Director of the Division on Civil Rights. “We are appreciative of former Attorney General Harvey’s thorough review of what happened in the 2022 election in Monmouth County, and we look forward to building on these findings as we work to safeguard the right to vote in future elections.”

The New Jersey Globe first reported the vote-counting problems in January.

This story was updated at 3:06 PM with comment from Platkin and Iyer.