Correction
The error was caught and corrected the night of the election. Of the registered voters in the precinct, 22 voted for Bush, 193 for Gore, and 1 for Nader. However, the error did cause embarrassment and scrutiny both for Volusia election workers and for GES, provider of the electronic ballots. According to Jake Tapper, on January 17, 2001 Volusia elections employee Lana Hires (not the Supervisor of Elections, as incorrectly reported by Tapper) wrote a memo to GES officials, stating,
"I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County ... I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here 'looking dumb.'"
The facts and story of Al Gore's minus 16,022 vote anomaly in Volusia County are the subject of the controversial 2006 HBO documentary Hacking Democracy which climaxes in the on-camera hacking of the same Diebold system used in Volusia in 2000. That hack, now known as the 'Hursti Hack,' allegedly used negative votes to rig the votes on the Diebold voting system.
Read more about this topic: Volusia Error
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