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Election Problem Log - 2004 to 2009
Check out our other problem logs!
VotersUnite! began this problem log with the November 2004 election. It continued its compilation of problems reported in the media by adding news stories about subsequent elections, through 2009. See also: Failures by vendor and Failures by state.
Sort Order:               
Date Problem Type State
Vendor
Description
8/28/2008 Poor design FL Sequoia Indian River County. 5000 votes were counted twice when results were uploaded to the central office. 40 precincts did a test of the modem system before doing the real transfer. The central office computer accepted both sets of results and added them. Story Archive Story2 Archive

Update 9/6/08. The number of votes counted twice in the Indian River County election now stands at 10,737 — which is double the votes the county elections office reported a week ago. Story2 Archive

8/7/2008 Wrong ballot MO Sequoia Cole County. 144 voters at in Jefferson City's Fourth Ward, were given and voted on a Western District ballot, not an Eastern District ballot. The margin of victory in the Republican Primary for Cole County Eastern District Commissioner was only 7 votes, and the election may have to be redone. Story Archive
8/5/2008 Machine malfunction MO Sequoia Greene County. The accessibility features of the Sequoia Edge e-voting machine failed to work, preventing a blind woman from being able to vote independently as required by HAVA. Story Archive Story2 Archive2
6/27/2008 Machine malfunction FL Sequoia Palm Beach County. About 700 votes for three precincts (14% of the total votes) weren't counted on election night after Tuesday's special city commission election. According to elections office spokeswoman Kathy Adams, the cartridges from those precincts hadn't been counted on election night when all the cartridges were brought to a tabulation center to be "read" by vote-counting machines. She said the office didn't know why the cartridges weren't read properly the first time. She said it was possible that one reader wasn't working properly and that all three cartridges were read by that reader. Story Archive
Update June 18. Recounting the cartridges added 707 votes, but did not change any outcomes. Story2 Archive2
6/5/2008 Machine malfunction CA Sequoia San Bernadino County. The vote-counting software in the central tabulator counts precincts incorrectly. Sequoia has known about the defect for at least a year, but has not yet corrected it. Riverside County's registrar also has known about the problem and has developed workarounds to deal with it. Story Archive
6/5/2008 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Monmouth County. The computer in Middletown malfunctioned and wouldn't read the results cartridges from the AVC Advantage e-voting machines. The cartridges were transported to the office in Freehold. Story Archive
5/30/2008 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi, who discovered the Sequoia Advantage vote discrepancies during the primary election, has now found that the Sequoia system won't report votes for Carlos Cedeño, a freeholder candidate. At first Sequoia said it was because of the tilde in his name. Then, when the county tried entering it without the tilde and it still didn't work, they said it was because his candidate number was 999. Story Archive
4/22/2008 Machine malfunction PA Sequoia Northampton County. After four people had voted on the Sequoia Advantage paperless e-voting machine, election judge Craig Hynes realized that it had only registered one voter. He had to reset the machine. "We lost three voters and there's no getting them back," explained Hynes, "and at this point we don't even know who they were." Story Archive
4/22/2008 Poor design PA Sequoia Northampton County. Confusing ballot on the Sequoia Advantage. Delegates under the Democratic Presidential candidates are listed in tiny print AND don't necessarily support the candidate they are listed under. One voter reports: "In the lightest italic, smallest print under the delegates .... It states who they are committed to. And it is the tiniest print in the whole space, and they're mixed. Had I not read the sample ballot, I wouldn't have known. I would've voted for all the wrong people," Story Archive
2/23/2008 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Mercer County. 5% of the county's "Advantage" paperless e-voting machines reported incorrect turnout totals. They "miscalculated the numbers of total Republican and total Democratic ballots, county Clerk Paula Sollami-Covello said." Officials are claiming the machines tallied the votes correctly, but they give no indication of how they could know that. Story Archive
2/20/2008 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Union County and others using the "Advantage" paperless e-voting machine. County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi discovered that the numbers from the cartridges that print out vote tallies and the paper-tape backup within the machine didn't match. Rajoppi asked her colleagues in other counties to perform the same test, and similar problems were found on about 2 dozen voting machines, including those in Bergen, Gloucester, Middlesex and Ocean counties.

For example, the tape on one machine counted 168 votes for Democratic candidates, while the cartridge showed 170. On the Republican side, the tape counted 57 votes, but the cartridge showed 55. Story Archive Story2 Archive2 Story3 Archive3

Update: March 12, 2008. After Sequoia's explanation blaming poll workers for the problem, the county clerks asked Ed Felton of Princeton University to review the machines. And the constitutional officers unanimously passed the resolution seeking an independent analysis during an executive board meeting. The association sent the resolution to the governor's office and the state attorney general's office, which oversees all elections. Story Archive

Update: March 17, 2008. The Princeton investigation has been called off because of a letter sent by Sequoia threatening the counties and Mr. Felton with lawsuits. Story Archive Story2

2/12/2008 Machine malfunction DC Sequoia Optical scanners broke down across the district, and unscanned ballots stacked up (even on a piano) for poll worker to scan when the machines were repaired. Story Archive
2/7/2008 Machine malfunction CA Sequoia Santa Cruz County. Unidentified "bugs" in the Sequoia system caused counting delays. "Gail Pellerin, the county clerk and elections head, traced the delays to two hardware problems with Sequoia Voting Systems equipment that took time to recognize and address." Story Archive
2/7/2008 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Essex County. Technical and human errors occurred here and throughout the state. Essex County Superintendent of Elections Carmine Casciano said that 12 out of about 650 Sequoia Advantage electronic voting machines were replaced on Tuesday. Four machines were replaced due to Board of Election workers mistakenly turning off the machines and thereby deactivating them. In Montclair, two Sequoia e-voting machines had to be replaced due to electronic errors.

Other technical issues occurred, but Casciano called them “nothing significant” and said technicians soon repaired them. One example: in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church’s polling station the button for Republican candidate Mitt Romney did not work on an electronic machine. Story Archive

2/7/2008 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Warren County. A programming error forced about 900 Warren County voters to use emergency ballots after a handful of machines that electronically encode ballots onto cards stopped working. Story Archive
2/7/2008 Poor design NJ Sequoia Hudson County. Sequoia Advantage e-voting machines. "Hilda Rosario, supervisor of elections for Hudson County, explained that some poll workers failed to take what are known as "cartridges," which keep the official vote counts, from individual balloting machines before the machines were officially sealed Tuesday night. While tallies from the voting machines were counted at each polling place at the end of Tuesday's balloting, the cartridges contain an exact record that must be delivered to county elections officials so the vote can be officiated." Story Archive
2/7/2008 Registration errors NJ Sequoia Essex County. Superintendent of Elections Casciano believes that portions of the state experienced problems with the statewide voter registration system. “It’s causing us all kinds of grief,” Casciano told The Times on Tuesday. “It has arbitrarily changed people’s parties.” In these cases, people had to vote on provisional ballots. Story Archive
2/6/2008 Machine malfunction CA Sequoia Santa Clara County. More than a dozen people trying to vote in the Democratic primary at one polling station were almost turned away without casting ballots after paper ballots ran out and the only electronic voting machine at the polling place malfunctioned. An independent election observer and a software engineer waiting to vote fixed the touch-screen machine for the 13 people waiting to cast their ballots. (The machine had been decertified by the Secretary of State for all but voters with disabilities.) Story Archive Story2 Archive2
2/6/2008 Machine malfunction CA Sequoia Riverside County. At times, one or two of the six ballot-counting machines in the Moreno Valley office broke down. At most times, one could not operate, delaying the final results. On average, officials were able to count about 15,000 ballots an hour. "The machines were expected to count about 400 ballots a minute. Since the polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, they've averaged about 36 per minute." Story Archive Story2 Archive2
2/6/2008 Machine malfunction IL Sequoia Cook County. Election returns from the first precinct of the Second Ward in Evanston were missing 247 of its 540 ballots, said poll watcher Shannon Seiberling. The polling place uses a mix of optical-scan and computerized voting systems. Seiberling said the error probably occurred while poll workers were compiling the digital results from the four touch-screen voting machines at the polling place, when the scanner was supposed to add its total automatically. The number of missing votes equals the number of paper ballots that were scanned, though, according to the article, there is no way to determine whether this is what caused the discrepancy. Story Archive Story2 Archive2
2/5/2008 Ballot printing CA Sequoia Riverside County. A printing error scored as many as 60,000 absentee ballots so deeply that they fell apart when voters removed them from envelopes. That problem was slowing a team of 16 election workers, who were painstakingly hand-copying the last of roughly 35,000 ballots onto intact ballot cards Monday night. Story Archive

Feb. 16, 2008. This follow-up article indicates about half the number of problem ballots. It says, "about 13,000 of the estimated 18,000 defective ballots handled by the registrar's office have already been duplicated for counting. Dunmore said the ballot vendor, K&H Printers of Washington, absorbed the cost to reprint and mail additional ballots." Story Archive

2/5/2008 Machine malfunction CA Sequoia San Francisco. The Sequoia touchscreen froze while a voter was attempting to vote. After he inserted the plastic activation card into the machine, "Nothing moved--neither touching nor talking to the machine worked. What's worse, the card was now stuck in the machine as there was no eject button or function. The clerk who handed me the card was confounded. ... [After consulting another clerk,] the clerk then proceeded to lift the back of my voting machine up, slapping it hard so that it must have told it to reboot itself. ... After the two-minute reboot, voting was simple." Story Archive
2/5/2008 Machine malfunction IL Sequoia Chicago and Cook County. Voting was delayed at a number of Chicago polling places, and voters were turned away for many and varied reasons: touch screen voting not working; equipment delivered to the wrong location; a security found unconscious inside; voters locked out "for security reasons"; pollworkers not showing up; doors unlabeled and locked.

Several of the delays were at least one or two hours, some prompting orders to keep locations open later in the evening. "Nonetheless, Chicago election officials claimed a "hugely successful" start, saying that only 9 of 2,579 precincts failed to open on time, and those by only 10 or 15 minutes." Story Archive

2/5/2008 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Hoboken. Both Advantage electronic voting machines broke down at one polling place, delaying voting. About a dozen voters were turned away. Story Archive Story2
2/5/2008 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Salem County. Votes flipped from Obama to Clinton on the AVC Edge touch screen. Story
2/5/2008 Poor design NJ Sequoia Hudson County. County Clerk Barbara Netchert told The Jersey Journal that some poll workers -- in districts throughout the county although heavily in Jersey City -- were pulling the cartridges out of the Sequoia Advantage e-voting machines before closing the machines, resulting in them not registering properly. Story Archive
1/29/2008 Machine malfunction FL Sequoia Palm Beach County. Sequoia activator card failed. Also, the touch screen machines were mistakenly shut down early at one polling place and couldn't be turned back on. Replacements were brought. Story Archive
1/29/2008 Machine malfunction FL Sequoia Palm Beach County. A defective early-voting cartridge (electronic ballot box) prevented the county from completing the results. "Although a backup tape allowed elections staff to recoup the results, Anderson said the problem was so significant it may lead to the elections office having to reprogram all of its voting machines." Story Archive Story2
Follow up 1/31/08. Story3 Archive3 Archive2
1/29/2008 Machine malfunction FL Sequoia Palm Beach County. Voters reported malfunctions on the Edge touch screen machine. Some -- including Rush Limbaugh -- said the machine froze while voting. Some said their ballot was cast by the machine when they attempted to move ahead to the screen where they expected candidates to be listed. Story Archive
1/29/2008 Machine malfunction FL Sequoia Hillsborough County. Some voters said their ballot was cast by the Edge touch screen machine when they attempted to move ahead to the screen where they expected candidates to be listed. Story Archive
1/29/2008 Machine malfunction FL Sequoia Hillsborough County. Vote flipping on the Edge touch screen. "a voter would press the button for one candidate but the machine would read that vote as being cast for another candidate." Story Archive
1/26/2008 Machine malfunction FL Sequoia Palm Beach County. Wireless Internet cards that poll workers use to quickly verify voters' political affiliation, which ballot they should receive and whether they are actually registered to vote stopped working properly for about three hours late Friday morning. Some voters were turned away. Some waited at the polls. Story Archive
11/8/2007 Poor design CO Sequoia Denver. Election officials are overwhelmed with the counting process, and only one person has the expertise to tally the votes. Officials are concerned about the 2008 election when the turnout is expected to be significantly higher. Story Archive
11/8/2007 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Mercer County. Two Sequoia Advantage electronic voting machines malfunctioned during the election and were removed from service. One was repaired. The memory cartridges, which hold the votes, were not removed from the machines on election night. The votes will be counted with the provisional ballots. Story Archive
11/8/2007 Machine malfunction VA Sequoia Scott County. More than 30 of the county's 45 electronic voting machines displayed errors instead of working properly when they first started up in the morning. The machines had been "upgraded" with new firmware that displays larger fonts, but the technician from Atlantic Election Services who installed the new firmware missed a step and the installation went awry.

AES managed to get one or two machines per precinct working. "Each machine required software changes, as well as a diagnostic check that took about 12 minutes." Software changes in the middle of an election! Story Archive Story2 Archive2

11/7/2007 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Atlantic County. Sequoia Advantage. When election workers tried to transfer the data from about 320 electronic voting machines to a central database that would count them all, the central computer wouldn't read the cards. Eventually Sequoia helped them resolve the problem. Story Archive Story2 Archive2
11/7/2007 Malfeasance NJ Sequoia Camden County. Cartridges were never removed from 12 of the voting machines, so the votes on them were not included in the count. But "the additional votes were not expected to affect the outcome of any races" said the election officials. A court order would be required to open the machines and count the votes. Story Archive

The second article says it was seven machines. Story2

11/10/07 update. A superior court judge ordered the machines to be opened and the cartridges to be removed so the votes could be tallied. Story Archive Archive2

11/6/2007 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Mercer County. Seven of the county's 257 Sequoia Advantage machines broke down during the election. It is unknown whether votes were recorded on them before they broke down. If so, those votes were lost. Story Archive
1/9/2007 Machine malfunction IL Sequoia Cook County. An investigative panel has found that " 'technology failures in multiple areas' and a lack of testing triggered a spiraling series of glitches that left some results unclear for days. "Although technology problems occurring on Election Night constituted the primary cause of the reporting delays, operational shortcomings in the process leading up to Election Day also played a role in failing to understand and thus mitigate the risks," the report said.

"The flawed user interface on the HAAT [machine designed to transmit vote totals from precincts to central office] led 90 percent of election judges to believe that they had successfully transmitted, whereas only 56 percent had actually done so," the report said. Story Archive

12/2/2006 Machine malfunction NJ Sequoia Passaic County. Transferred totals don't match machine totals. "As 2006 election returns were electronically transferred from voting districts to the clerk's office, two voting districts had tallies that did not match the voting totals recorded by the machines, [Passaic County Clerk Karen] Brown said." Story
Archive
Records: 41-80 of 137
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