brennan center for justice

event of an overvote displayed a confusing messageand did not automatically reject a ballot, had anovervote rate on Election Day 2008 that was as muchas 18 times that of systems used in other Floridacounties. 338After being alerted to the results of the Florida study,the State of Wisconsin completed its purchase of thesame system on the condition that overvotes wouldbe automatically rejected. New York, which wasunaware of the Florida study at time of purchase,opted to set up machines to work in the same waythey had in Florida in 2008. 339October 2008October 2008SequoiaOptech InsightPremierAccuVote-OSFloridaFloridaPalm Beach County, FLThe Palm Beach Post reported that creases in someabsentee ballots appeared to cause the high-speedoptical scanner to read the creases as votes: “Whenelections officials this week tried to figure out whygood ballots were being rejected, they begansuspecting that the machines are incorrectly readingthe crease as a vote. That would mean they areincorrectly reporting that a person voted for morethan one candidate in a race that lines up near thefold.” This reportedly caused the machines to readthe creased ballots as overvotes. “Since so-calledovervotes aren't allowed, the machines areprogrammed to reject ballots where they occur.Those ballots, along with ones that voters didn'tmark properly, are then given to the canvassing boardto review.” Consequently, election officials “[r]atherthan risk miscounting votes in any race . . . are askingstaff to duplicate all questionable ballots. They willthen review those ballots again to ensure they areduplicated properly.” 340Duval County, FLFirst Coast News reported that nearly half of thevoting machines in Jacksonville were malfunctioning,indicating the ballot was too long. Officials insistedthat they had measured the ballots and they wereregulation length. 341A report from a local television affiliate stated, thatofficials eventually learned that “the real problem waswith the ballot printers.” “If the paper is not loadedBrennan Center for Justice | 57