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New Jersey — Fairfield Township 2011 Vote Switch

Documented case of votes for one candidate registering as votes for their opponent in a local NJ Democratic Committee primary with 43 voters — election overturned by court; evidence logs erased after judicial order to preserve them.

FieldDetails
Case NameZirkle v. Cumberland County Board of Elections
Election Year2011 (June 7 primary)
LocationFairfield Township, Cumberland County, New Jersey
OfficeDemocratic Executive Committee — District 3 (two seats)
Fraud TypeVoting Machine / Official Misconduct
Scale43 voters; vote totals completely inverted for two candidates
MachineSequoia AVC Advantage DRE (direct-recording electronic)
Legal StatusCivil — election voided and new election ordered; criminal referral made but no charges filed
Evidence RatingSTRONG EVIDENCE — court-supervised case; Princeton expert confirmed manipulation; sworn affidavits from 28+ voters; judge voided election

Video Report​

Small NJ local election (43 voters) stolen using electronic voting machines — candidate called all voters personally and discovered her votes had been switched with her opponent's. Source: @TheSCIF on X, April 14, 2026. 1,881 likes, 907 retweets, 18,438 impressions.

Summary​

On June 7, 2011, Fairfield Township, Cumberland County, New Jersey held a Democratic primary for two open seats on the District 3 Democratic Executive Committee. Four candidates ran: Cynthia Zirkle and Ernest Zirkle versus Vivian Henry and Mark Henry. The total electorate was approximately 43 voters (86 total vote tallies across two seats per voter).

The official certified results showed: Vivian Henry 34, Mark Henry 33, Ernest Zirkle 9, Cynthia Zirkle 10. The Henrys were declared the winners.

Cynthia Zirkle knew the community well enough to personally contact everyone who voted. After calling voters, she found that many who assured her they had voted for the Zirkles were recorded as having voted for the Henrys — and vice versa. More than 28 voters subsequently provided sworn affidavits stating they had voted for the Zirkles, not the Henrys. The numbers the voters reported were consistent with a complete inversion of the two candidates' tallies: the Zirkles had actually won, not lost.

The Zirkles filed suit against the Cumberland County Board of Elections. In the resulting investigation, the county election board's administrator admitted that the Sequoia AVC Advantage DRE voting machine had been programmed with a ballot definition file that contained a swap — votes cast for the Zirkles registered as votes for the Henrys, and vice versa. The cause was described by officials as "human error in the programming of the voting machine."

Evidence & Documentation​

  • 28+ sworn affidavits: Voters signed sworn statements attesting they had voted for the Zirkles. The number of affidavits was inconsistent with the official tally showing the Zirkles with only 19 combined votes.
  • Expert forensic analysis: Princeton University computer security professor Andrew Appel examined the Sequoia AVC Advantage machine and confirmed the vote-switching occurred through ballot definition file programming. Appel had previously documented security vulnerabilities in the Sequoia AVC Advantage, including the ability to install malicious software in under seven minutes.
  • Evidence destruction: The day after Cumberland County Superior Court Judge David Krell ordered the voting machine impounded and its data preserved, county systems analyst Jason Cossaboon erased the event logs and files on the laptop used to program the machine. Cossaboon stated the deletion was to address "slow processing speed."
  • Court action: Judge Krell found the evidence destruction serious enough to refer the matter to the New Jersey State Prosecutor's office for criminal investigation. He also voided the election.

Machine: Sequoia AVC Advantage DRE​

The Sequoia AVC Advantage is a direct-recording electronic voting machine that records votes entirely in computer memory — no paper ballot is produced for the voter to verify. The machine's behavior is determined by a ballot definition file programmed by county election staff. Andrew Appel and colleagues at Princeton had demonstrated prior to this incident that:

  1. The machine's vote totals can be altered by reprogramming the ballot definition file
  2. Malicious software can be installed in the machine in under seven minutes with physical access
  3. No paper record exists against which to independently verify the electronic tally

The absence of a voter-verified paper audit trail made it impossible to determine definitively whether the programming swap was an accident or deliberate — once the logs were erased, forensic reconstruction was severely limited.

Timeline​

DateEvent
June 7, 2011Democratic primary held; official tally: Henrys 67 votes, Zirkles 19 votes
June 2011Cynthia Zirkle calls all voters; discovers their recollections contradict official results
June–July 201128+ voters sign sworn affidavits attesting they voted for Zirkles
Summer 2011Zirkles file suit; Judge Krell orders voting machine impounded
Day after impoundment orderJason Cossaboon erases laptop event logs (claimed "slow processing")
Summer 2011Princeton's Andrew Appel examines machine; confirms vote swap through programming
September 2011Judge Krell voids election; orders new election; refers evidence destruction to NJ State Prosecutor
September 27, 2011New election held; Zirkles win with approximately 33% of vote vs Henrys' 17%
2011–presentNo criminal charges publicly filed against Cossaboon or election officials

Key Figures​

  • Cynthia Zirkle — Candidate who lost the original election, discovered the fraud by personally contacting all voters, filed suit
  • Ernest Zirkle — Co-candidate (husband), also subject of the vote swap
  • Jason Cossaboon — Cumberland County Systems Analyst; erased laptop event logs after court order to preserve evidence; no criminal charges filed
  • Andrew Appel — Princeton University Professor of Computer Science; forensic examiner; previously demonstrated Sequoia AVC Advantage could be hacked; confirmed the vote swap in this case
  • Judge David Krell — Cumberland County Superior Court; voided election; referred evidence destruction to state prosecutor

The Official Explanation​

Cumberland County election officials described the swap as "human error in the programming of the voting machine." They did not deny the swap occurred — the admission of the programming error was part of what led Judge Krell to void the election. The official position was that it was accidental.

Why This Case Matters​

This case is one of the clearest documented examples of votes being switched between candidates in a U.S. election. Several features make it especially significant for election integrity research:

  1. The scale is perfectly verifiable: 43 voters, most of whom knew the candidate personally. She could call every single one. This is the ideal conditions to detect a switch — in larger elections with millions of voters, the same manipulation would be undetectable without a voter-verified paper trail.

  2. The machine type is widely deployed: Sequoia AVC Advantage machines have been used across multiple states. New Jersey deployed them statewide. The vulnerabilities Appel documented are not unique to this machine or this county.

  3. Evidence was destroyed after court order: The erasure of event logs after a judicial preservation order is the same pattern documented in Tina Peters' Mesa County case (where records were allegedly deleted during Dominion's "Trusted Build" update) and in Maricopa County (where files were allegedly deleted before the Arizona Senate audit). This pattern of evidence destruction following disclosure is a recurring feature across documented election fraud investigations.

  4. No criminal consequences: Despite a judge finding the evidence destruction serious enough to refer to the state prosecutor, no public record of charges or convictions exists. This outcome — where documentary evidence of fraud or tampering leads to a voided election but no criminal prosecution — recurs across election integrity cases.

The Counterargument​

  • Cumberland County officials described the swap as "human error." A programming mistake in a ballot definition file is plausible — county election staff are not always technically sophisticated, and mapping candidate names to machine button positions is a manual process prone to error.
  • No forensic evidence conclusively proved the swap was deliberate rather than accidental. The erased logs would have been the key evidence either way — their absence makes the intent question permanently unresolvable.
  • The small scale of this election (43 voters, a Democratic committee seat) argues against a sophisticated organized fraud operation — the stakes would be very low. Human error remains a plausible explanation.
  • Andrew Appel's broader work documenting machine vulnerabilities does not prove those vulnerabilities were exploited in this case specifically; he confirmed the swap occurred, not that it was deliberate.
  • Dominion ICX Ballot Marking — A different machine platform (Dominion ICX) where the ballot-marking device fills in the ballot for the voter; similar insider-access vulnerability
  • Clint Curtis — Florida programmer who testified under oath before Congress that he wrote vote-switching software in 2000 for Tom Feeney; the software worked exactly as alleged here — switching votes between candidates
  • Ware County Georgia — Dominion machine in Ware County, Georgia showed 37% Biden / 63% Trump in a hand count vs. machine tally; parallel dispute over machine accuracy
  • 2020 Antrim County Michigan — Dominion machines in Antrim County showed 68% error rate in forensic audit; contested by election officials

Other Coverage Worth Reading​

  • Clint Curtis: Florida programmer testified before Congress he built vote-switching software in 2000 — the exact mechanism alleged in NJ 2011.
  • Dominion ICX Ballot Marking: Modern ballot-marking device demo shows machine fills in voter's ballot — another insider-access vector.
  • Tina Peters: Mesa County clerk who backed up Dominion machines — then 29,000 records were deleted; same evidence-destruction pattern as NJ 2011.
  • Ware County Georgia: Ware County hand count vs. machine tally discrepancy — another DRE machine accuracy dispute.

Sources​

This information was compiled by Claude AI research.

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