brennan center for justice

February2008September2008PremierAccuVote-OSSequoiaOptech III-PEagleConnecticutDistrict ofColumbiathe machine or why it did not work. 328Hartford County, CTNewsday reported that “[s]ix out of the 825 [opticalscan voting machines] used across the state had to bereplaced with back-ups. Two jammed and three werenot properly programmed, [Windham DemocraticRegistrar Paulann Lescoe] said.” It was unclear whythe last of the six machines had to be replaced. 329Washington, DCThe Washington Post reported that a malfunctioningcartridge for a Sequoia precinct-count optical scannercaused vote totals to be duplicated into multiple racesand reported an implausibly high overvote rate of1,542 in five contests. 330According to a report on the incident that Sequoiasent the Board of Elections shortly after the incident,the manufacturer could find no irregularities in thesystem and attributed the problem to human error. 331February2008November2008SequoiaOptech III-PEaglePremierAccuVote-OSXDistrict ofColumbiaFloridaFor more on this incident, see case study 12 on pages 21- 22 of this report.Washington, DCAccording to the Washington Post, “[s]ome pollingsites . . . [dealt] with jammed machines, which werecaused when ballot clerks failed to properly tear thestubs off paper ballots fed to the machines to becounted.” Moreover, “[a]t Metropolitan AMEChurch on M Street NW, the ballot-countingmachine broke down. Edgar R.M. Frazier, theprecinct captain, said Board of Elections officialsbrought another one ‘within 40 minutes.’” It wasunclear at the time what caused the breakdown. 332Hillsborough County, FLThe Tampa Tribune reported that, according toHillsborough County election supervisor BuddyJohnson, a delay of election results was caused by“problems with the . . .elections system purchasedfrom Premier Election Solutions. Among theproblems: Election officials had to break up earlyvoting results into smaller pieces to prevent crashingthe computer system, and about 150 optical scannershad trouble transmitting results and had to bemanually taken to the elections office.” 333Brennan Center for Justice | 55