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Software blamed for delay of Atlantic County vote counts
By THOMAS BARLAS, Press of Atlantic City, November 8, 2007

State authorities said an apparent problem with vote-counting software prevented Atlantic County election officials from promptly releasing ballot tallies on election night.

But just who is responsible for the problem, what caused the electronic glitch that created it and why the results were not promptly posted on the county's Web site after being counted manually all remain unclear.

State Attorney General's Office spokesman David Wald said the problem apparently involved the computer software used to count and then record votes cast on the electronic voting machines.

"The reason for the glitch has not yet been identified," he said.

Officials with the Atlantic County Superintendent of Elections Office were consulting with Sequoia Voting Systems on Wednesday about the problem. The county spent $2.9 million to buy more than 320 voting machines and related electronic equipment from Sequoia in 2005.
 
Howard Cramer, vice president of sales for the California-based company, blamed Atlantic County's computer system.

"We helped them walk through a system configuration issue," he said. "Once it was identified and corrected, they were in good shape. Sometimes trying to track down those issues can take a little bit of time."

Cramer said Sequoia's software worked properly.

Atlantic County Superintendent of Elections John W. Mooney did not return requests for comment Wednesday.

Atlantic County is one of 18 New Jersey counties that used the same model voting machine, and none of the other counties experienced problems Tuesday, Wald said.

Each voting machine provides a paper printout of the vote totals cast for that voting machine, he said. Election officials could have used the vote totals listed on the printouts as a base from which to post the results on the county's Web site after doing a manual count, he said.

Instead, people visiting the Web site could not find the promised link to the vote totals, which were supposed to be d regularly after the polls closed at 8 p.m. It's not clear when the link to the vote totals became available.

"It should be a concern of everyone," Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson, a Republican who was re-elected Tuesday, said of the vote totals not being promptly available on the Web site.

Levinson contends the problem does not involve the electronic equipment.

"It's a new superintendent," he said of Mooney, a Democrat who replaced Republican Joanne Armbruster this summer. "John Mooney is a good guy but is on the job training right now.

"This is John Mooney's first election and, unfortunately, it didn't work out the way he had expected. I'm sure John Mooney has learned from this and will do better next time."

The 320 Sequoia electronic voting machines replaced other voting machines that were so old that election officials had problems finding replacement parts.

The county put $602,000 toward the purchase of the machines. The rest of money involved federal funds paid out under the federal government's Help America Vote Act, which was designed to upgrade voting technology across the country. The act was prompted in part by the controversial 2000 presidential election involving Republican George Bush and Democrat Al Gore.

Machine vote totals are collected on cartridges. Those cartridges are then taken to offices in Atlantic City, Northfield and Mays Landing, where they are connected to computer equipment for counting.

Mooney said Tuesday night that the computer read the data but there was a problem transferring it to the database system that tallies the votes.

Wald said it's up to each county to decide which voting machine system to buy. The Sequoia machines were certified by the state as being acceptable after significant testing, he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 



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