brennan center for justice

February2008November2006November2005May 2008February2008Hart InterCivicKodak i840SequoiaInsight 400 CDieboldAccuVote-OSPremierAccuVote-OSPremierAccuVote-OSColoradoColoradoColoradoConnecticutConnecticutDouglas County, COAccording to the Denver Post, “ballot scanningmachines from Hart InterCivic continue to sufferfrom the same problems that led them to bedecertified last year.” The Post states that the “opticalscanners too often read stray marks as votes, even ifthey are just the tiny dots from somebody resting apen on the ballot before marking a box, according tothe reports [by the Colorado voting machine testingboard]. 324Denver, COThe Rocky Mountain News reported that votecounting in an election for several local offices tooknearly a week because 70,000 absentee ballots hadbeen mailed out with barcode misprints. The Sequoiascanners could not sort ballots correctly by district, soelection officials had to do so by hand. Additionally,election officials reported that many voters had usedincorrect ink pens or marked their ballots in amanner that made it unlikely that the scanners couldrecord their votes. As a result, at least 5% of absenteeballots had to be transcribed onto unused ballots bypoll workers in order to be scanned. 325Pitkin County, COAccording to the Aspen Times, almost 1,200 phantomvotes were reported in one precinct. Election officialsinitially announced that 1,560 people voted inPrecinct 5, but later official results showed that 374people had voted in that precinct. Apparently, themistake was not caused by an electronic machineerror, but instead by faulty spreadsheet formulas usedto tally votes from each precinct. 326Litchfield County, CTThe News-Times reported that the “new opticalscanning machine at [New Milford]’s Lanesvilledistrict malfunctioned, which necessitated the handcounting of all 426 votes there.” At the time, it wasunclear what caused the problem. 327Hartford County, CTAccording to the Boston Globe, “[a] new opticalscanning machine did not work and voters had to puttheir ballots in an auxiliary slot to be counted later.”The Globe reported no further information regarding54 | Brennan Center for Justice