[Fair use for education and research purpose only]

Friday May 5, 10:23 AM Title: Computer Glitch Delays London Mayor Vote Count

LONDON (Reuters) - Counting in London's mayoral elections was held up when some of the electronic equipment used to scan and record ballot papers broke down, officials said.

They said the equipment -- being used for the first time in Britain for a major ballot -- had caused problems in one of the 14 London constituencies covering the capital's five million voters.

"I can confirm that there is a problem with some of the computers in Enfield and Haringey (constituency)," said chief returning officer Robert Hughes.

Asked if the hitch was linked to the "ILOVEYOU" computer virus which ravaged computer systems around the world on Thursday, Hughes laughed and said he did not think that was the case.

The technical problems delayed the announcement of the final result of the London mayoral elections.

Comments to: rnews-admin@uk.yahoo-inc.com

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000505/91/a5r2p.html

====================

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), May 08, 2000

Answers

Dee, you just keep digging, digging, digging. You're always hanging in there, where so many others have just given up.

What would we ever do without you?

-- JackW (jpayne@webtv.net), May 08, 2000.

Jack,

Thank you for the support. I appreciate it very much.

Oh, BTW...while I was digging I found this...it is priceless and I think it should get an award for the best explanation of a computer problem:

Friday May 5, 5:09 PM Title: Chaos blamed on green baize

By Geraint Smith and Patrick Sawer

The man in charge of the first ballot to elect a London Mayor today placed the blame for turning it into a fiasco on an anonymous caretaker who "might have" put the wrong sort of green baize under sophisticated vote-counting machines.

According to Robert Hughes, the returning officer, a delay of at least four hours in counting votes for the mayoralty and the new London Assembly came about because "fluff from green baize tablecloths" got into the scanners at the Enfield count, "causing static" and blocking them.

The knock-on effect was to hold up the announcement of the new Mayor until Enfield had completed its count.

"We didn't know people would put the machines on this green baize," he said. "It could have been a local caretaker for all I know. Who's to know? The machines were placed on the green baize cloth on tables and there was something specific about it giving off fibres which created static. It was a one in a million chance."

Asked whether the machines had not been tested before the count, he said: "We have tested these machines to destruction. Of course, a test doesn't always turn up something that is going wrong. We had one full trial run in the one constituency. They were tested for a 60 per cent turnout over nine hours with all sorts of glitches thrown in - but not environmental ones."

A spokesmen for Data and Research Services, the makers of the machines, said: "Green fluff from green baize tablecloths got lifted up into the machines and clogged them. It took up to two hours for engineers to work out it was the fluff that was causing the problem. The scanners have never been asked to operate on this sort of material before."

He was still confident of getting a result "this morning". "If we get the result any time today, it will be the first time a vote of this complexity has been carried out in that time."

Mr Hughes said that a delay of four hours was not bad: "When Iran had a similar election recently it took them two weeks. It is not a disaster. It is not a catastrophe." In fact, according to the original timetable handed to reporters when they arrived last night, the delay was of at least six hours. There had also been problems with ballot papers, Mr Hughes said. These were not necessarily spoiled papers, but folded papers or papers with multiple votes which had to be adjudicated - a process involving scrutiny by the local returning officer and all the party agents involved.

The constituency counts reported over-flowing "stacks"of papers building up in the returning officers' in-trays. "I have also heard there have been problems getting ballot boxes from polling stations across these large constituencies to the counting centres,"said Mr Hughes.

As though these were not woes enough, ambitious plans to put the results instantaneously on to the internet from the declaration room at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in Westminster also fell to pieces as the laptop computers intended for the purpose "died".

"The people have gone back to base," said a clearly embarrassed chief press officer. "They will do it from there. We have changed our plans."

Asked why the plans had been changed, she answered: "It is as you have just told me. The laptops died."

Another source said that in one counting station, a table had collapsed, damaging a counting machine.

The machines, looking like giant photocopiers, introduced for the first time today, should have produced a result by 3am, counting at a rate of 8,000 papers an hour on the expected turnout of around 35 per cent.

The announcement of the result was put back first to 7am, then to 9am, then to 10am at the earliest. The first turnout figures, which had been due by midnight, arrived more than four hours late.

The London Socialist Alliance, which first reported the difficulties, blamed them on the failure of the Government either adequately to explain the voting process, or to make clear in advance that the ballot was for assembly members as well as the Mayor.

A spokesman said: "I actually found myself, supposedly as a canvasser at my local polling station, having to explain to people how to vote - and being thanked for doing so by the person in charge of the polling station. It was a ludicrous situation."

Shaun Ley, the BBC's London political editor, also told how he was given wrong advice on how to vote when he attended his polling station.

Mr Hughes said: "It has taken us longer to do this than we thought it would. Had we done this count manually it would have taken more than five days. We are obviously conditional on the pace of the slowest, and sadly Enfield have lost a number of hours."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000504/91/a5laq.html

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), May 08, 2000.