brennan center for justice

November2004November2008ES&SOptech IIIES&SModel 100IowaKansas153 votes while his challenger received 25. 396Scott County, IAThe Des Moines Register reported that optical scanmachines malfunctioned when tabulating absenteeballots. As a result, poll workers had to manuallyfeed about 23,000 ballots one by one. 397Crawford County, KSIn Crawford County, the Morning Sun reported thata programming glitch failed to follow sequencingnumbers that differentiate between ballots withcandidates in different positions. Under Kansas law,the order in which candidates appear on a ballot mustalternate. Because the machines counted all ballots asif they were configured the same, it misrecorded theresults for the race. “For instance, in the CrawfordCounty attorney’s race on ballot 15, John Gutierrezis listed first, and Michael Gayoso Jr. second. But onballots 16 and 17, Gayoso is the top name, withGutierrez underneath. With the error then, a vote forGayoso on ballot 17 was counted for Gutierrez, andvice versa. At the same time, there are some raceswhere a vote on ballot 16 would be the same as a voteon ballot 17.”April 2008ES&SiVotronicKansasCounty Clerk Don Pyle stated that “the glitch couldaffect four races,” but that the precise outcome wouldbe unknown until testing was complete. 398Saline County, KSIn Saline County, according to the Salina Journal,during the Salina City Commission race, somemachines were flipping votes⎯”When a voterpressed a certain candidate's bar on the votingmachine's screen, the candidate above the selectedcandidate instead received the checkmark.August 2002ES&SOptical Scan(modelunknown)Kansas“The error, [County Clerk Don] Merriman said,most likely was caused by a calibration problem inthe machine caused during transit to the pollingplaces.” 399Clay County, KSAccording to the Lawrence Journal World & News, acomputer glitch in an optical scan voting systemshowed that a challenger in a primary race for countycommissioner had won, but a hand recount showed70 | Brennan Center for Justice