Second time not the charm for new voting equipment

November 9, 2006
BY KATE N. GROSSMAN Staff Reporter
New voting equipment flopped again in suburban Cook County on Tuesday, just as it did during its March debut, prompting county officials to launch an investigation.

Voting went far smoother than in March, but delayed results from the suburbs left the outcome of the hotly contested Cook County Board president race uncertain until midday Wednesday.

Both candidates stormed Cook County Clerk David Orr's office Wednesday morning. Republican Tony Peraica called the election "a disaster."

Orr insisted changes he instituted since March produced significant improvements in voting and ballot tallying Tuesday but said speed remained a major problem.

"We did expect to do better, and we can improve," Orr said Wednesday afternoon. "There is a problem, and we're going to uncover it."

Chicago and suburban Cook County switched in March from punch card ballots to a dual system of touch-screen and paper ballots that are optically scanned. It is provided by Sequoia Voting Systems at a cost of about $50 million.

The main snafu Tuesday was slow electronic transmission of results from polling sites to a central location. Ultimately, results from half of the 2,400 precincts were hand-delivered to the Cook County Administration Building, 69 W. Washington. Some municipalities, such as Thornton Township, complained of poorly trained elections judges.

In March, results also were delayed, up to a week in some races. Complaints mounted about election workers' training, malfunctioning machines and problems merging results from the two types of ballots. The county has since retrained poll judges, placed "equipment managers" at all polling sites and, with Sequoia, improved and simplified the voting and transmission equipment.

Cook County worse than city
Orr plans to assemble a panel of experts to uncover why the county's problems continued Tuesday. One area to consider is why Chicago, which uses the same equipment and also had problems in March, produced results more quickly.

On Tuesday, Chicago and Cook County tabulated ballots cast before Election Day, but the city transmitted them before 7 p.m., avoiding the data bottleneck experienced by the county. The law, Orr says, requires waiting until 7 p.m. to transmit.

Neither Orr nor a Sequoia official cast blame, saying they would work together to fix the problem. Sequoia, which has contracts in 16 states, had only minor problems elsewhere Tuesday. Spokesman Christopher Lackner said Cook County results were slower than in its other jurisdictions.

Peraica blamed both Orr's office and Sequoia, saying he was considering a lawsuit for breach of contract against Sequoia. Orr urged voters not to lose sight of the bigger picture.

"We have the results, and we believe them to be accurate and secure," Orr said.