Minnesota voting machine's accuracy questioned

As if this Senate recount needed more drama. Well, we've got it.

The optical scanners used for voting in Minnesota are also used in Michigan and failed pre-election accuracy tests, according to Wired (via).

More from Wired:

On Monday, Threat Level published a letter written by a Michigan election clerk to the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission asserting that optical-scan machines made by Election Systems & Software failed pre-election tests because they counted votes incorrectly.

Oakland County Clerk Ruth Johnson wrote in her October 24th letter that the ES&S M-100 optical-scan machines had inconsistently counted the same ballots that were repeatedly run through the machines during tests. She said that "four of our communities or eight percent" had reported inconsistent vote totals during logic and accuracy tests and that conflicting vote totals had surfaced in other areas of Michigan as well, though she didn't elaborate on this.

ES&S disputed these claims.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said he wasn't worried about the machines and found Johnson's claim that neither the county nor ES&S had performed maintenance on their M-100s to be "outrageous."

"I just couldn't imagine what they were thinking not maintaining their machines," he told Threat Level, adding that in Minnesota "we maintain them, we test them, we post-election random test them" and they are "unbelievably accurate, much more accurate than people."

Despite the concern, it looks like Minnesota isn't so worried that this could change the election results.

Confused voters will be more of the problem: