brennan center for justice

February2008November2004August 2004SequoiaOptech 400CES&S OptechIV-CSequoiaEdgeCaliforniaCaliforniaCaliforniavote in the Democratic primary at that pollingstation were almost turned away without castingballots after paper ballots ran out and the onlyelectronic voting machine at the polling placemalfunctioned.” An “independent election observerand . . . a software engineer waiting to vote -- whofixed the touch-screen machine -- saved the day forthe 13 people waiting to cast their ballots.” TheChronicle contained no additional informationregarding the “malfunction” or what caused it. 315Riverside County, CA“The $500,000 ballot counting system bought by theRiverside County Registrar three months agomalfunctioned on election night,” the Desert Sunreported, “delaying results from [the] presidentialprimary.” Specifically, “three of the six counters hadproblems, including one that did not work for fourhours.” According to the paper, the ballot scanners“ran at a tenth of the advertised speed.” Although aSequoia spokeswoman stated that “‘[t]he slowness ofthe machines is due to the printing problemsRiverside experienced with the vendor,’” the CountyRegistrar of Voters did not comment on what causedthe delays. 316San Francisco County, CAAccording to Information Week, the conversionfunction that translates ballot images into computerreadabledata shut down after the amount of dataexceeded the limit set by the vendor, apparently as aresult of the city’s switch to a ranked-choice votingsystem. 317Sacramento, CAWired magazine and the Tri-Valley Herald reportedthat when Sequoia demonstrated its voting machinesto the state officials, its touch-screen machineoutfitted with a paper trail failed to report votes onSpanish language ballots. “The paper trail itselfseemed to work fine but what it revealed was when[the Sequoia representative] demonstrated voting inSpanish, the machine itself did not record his vote,”Darren Chesin, staff director for the Senate Electionsand Reapportionment Committee, told the Herald.“Programming errors can occur and the paper trailwas the way we caught it.” 31852 | Brennan Center for Justice