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4. Pulaski County, Arkansas, May 2006During early voting in the May primary, several voters complained of problems with an ES&S touch screenDRE. 70 According to a local newscast, Pulaski County election officials tested the machine and determinedthat the machine was not broken; an optical illusion perceived by voters who were over six feet tall causedthe problem. 71 Officials determined that the angle at which particularly tall voters viewed the screen causedthem to believe that they were voting for the candidate below the one for whom a vote was recorded. 72 Thisis a significant problem given that more than 15 percent of American males over the age of 20 are six feettall or taller. 73Pulaski County Director of Elections Susan Inman told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that when sheasked ES&S to examine the machine to ensure that there wasn’t a problem with the equipment, a companyemployee told her that they were already aware of optical illusion problems experienced by tall voters. 74A review screen that appears before voters finalize their ballots alerted some to the fact that their voteswere not recorded as intended. However, several studies have shown that most voters will not noticeerrors on their final review screens, so there is no way to know how many voters in Pulaski Countyactually cast their ballots for candidates other than the candidate of their choice. 75 Officials were lividat the thought that ES&S could have known about the problem and failed to warn them. 76 PulaskiCounty Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley launched an investigation into the issue, saying, “I can’tunderstand how in the world a big company like ES&S, with contracts all over the state of Arkansas,would know about a problem like this and fail to fix it.” 775. Florida, November 2006• • •In 2007, Diebold, Inc. conceded that its optical scan readers had a glitch that caused memory cardfailures, and told the Daytona Beach News-Journal that it would investigate the “J40 connector” thatattaches memory cards to its optical scan voting machines. 78 This admission came after complaintsabout memory card failures from election officials dating as far back as 2000. 79According to the News-Journal, Volusia County, Florida reported that eleven memory cards in Dieboldoptical scan machines failed during the November 2006 general election. 80 Premier told the News-Journal that the 4.4 percent error rate in Volusia County was “unusual,” but an investigation by thepaper revealed even higher error rates in other Florida counties using the same equipment. 81 Accordingto public records obtained by the paper, several other Florida counties experienced failure rates thatwere comparable to or higher than those observed in Volusia County. 82The 2006 incidents were not the first time that memory cards in Diebold machines failed in Volusia andother Florida counties. According to the News-Journal, a 2004 county report indicates that Volusia had 57memory card failures, which Diebold stated was “more memory card failures than ‘the rest of our customersin Florida combined.’” 83 The paper also reported that Volusia’s problems with memory cards dated back tothe 2000 general election, when 300 ballots went uncounted when a memory card failed in the middle ofballot scanning. 84 The loss of votes was not discovered until a hand recount began as a result of the closecontest. 85 The News-Journal noted that “Volusia County’s most infamous memory card problem . . . whenmore than 16,000 negative votes were recorded against Al Gore,” had “never been determined.” At thetime, a county election official wrote an angry e-mail asking the manufacturer to “please explain this sothat I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here looking dumb.” 8614 | Brennan Center for Justice