As several states prepare for recounts and the final presidential vote has yet to be finalized, voters are reminded of ensuring the integrity of elections, particularly those with a slim margin, from all irregularities.
As of Tuesday, Joe Biden is ahead in five key states with only slim margins.
Latest vote counts show Trump trailing in Georgia by 12,651 votes, Arizona by 14,468 votes, Wisconsin by 20,540 votes, Pennsylvania by 48,997 votes and Nevada by 36,274 votes.
The Trump campaign has already expressed its intention to request a recount in several states.
Past incidents of voter problems provide a good reminder of why allowing for a full count in a tight race is worth the wait.
Floridians may recall a 2007 incident in which 18,000 votes were not counted in Sarasota County.
The error was discovered due to a close congressional race in which Republican Vern Buchanan won by only 400 votes over Democrat Christine Jennings in the 13th Congressional District.
Buchanan is still in Congress, but now serves the 16th Congressional District.
In an investigative report, Wired noted then-Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent said the county’s voting machines did not have problems.
Her account was disputed.
“Incident reports from the election reveal Sarasota County poll workers from at least 19 precincts contacted technicians and election officials to report touch-screen sensitivity problems with the iVotronic voting machine,” Wired reported. “In those incidents, voters were forced to press the screen harder and repeatedly to register a vote. The complaints mirror the symptoms of a bug that the machine's maker, Election Systems & Software, revealed prior to the election in a warning unheeded by the county.”
Altogether Wired investigated 176 reports of problems with touchscreen voting machines and anecdotal accounts of hundreds of other voter complaints were shared.
"All of the reports make me suspect that there could be more than one thing going on with the machines," Doug Jones, a University of Iowa computer scientist, told Wired. "It's probably something messy. It's definitely more than just human factors and smoothing-filter issues causing the problems."
The incident does not appear to have been formally resolved and Dent does not appear to have suffered any retribution for her involvement.
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