| Date |
Problem Type |
State
|
Vendor
|
Description
|
| 11/5/2008 |
Ballot printing |
AR |
ESS |
Carroll County. Absentee ballots printed by ES&S failed to have enough ink in one of the coded blocks. After consulting ES&S, officials blackened in the block with black marker to get the ballots to scan properly through the M650 scanner.
Story
Archive |
| 11/4/2008 |
Ballot printing |
FL |
|
Broward County. A batch of about 40 paper ballots had one proposed change to Florida's constitution (Amendment 3) printed twice. Optical scanners rejected the ballots.
Story
Archive |
| 11/4/2008 |
Ballot printing |
IN |
ESS |
Madison County. Coding on over half the early-voting ballots printed by ES&S was positioned wrong on the paper, preventing the tabulators from being able to count the votes.
Story
Archive |
| 11/4/2008 |
Ballot printing |
OH |
|
Belmont County. The County Board of Elections officials are asking some voters to head back to the after a St. Clairsville renewal levy was left off some paper ballots.
Story
Archive |
| 10/28/2008 |
Ballot printing |
NC |
ESS |
Brunswick County. A poll worker at the Oak Island Recreation Center voting location put the paper in backward, causing the iVotronic touch screen not to print the individual records of votes cast on a majority of the polling machines.
Story
Archive |
| 10/24/2008 |
Ballot printing |
GA |
|
Gwinnett County. The oval on the absentee ballots is too dark and causes the scanners to tally incorrectly. The 10,000 returned ballots will be tallied by hand. The county is reprinting 19,000 ballots to send out for new requests.
Story
Archive |
| 10/23/2008 |
Ballot printing |
FL |
|
Polk County. Last week, Polk County sent out about 40,000 absentee ballots that did not include a nonpartisan statewide question. The county is sending out corrected ballots to those voters.
Story
Archive |
| 10/23/2008 |
Ballot printing |
SC |
|
Beaufort County. Absentee ballots didn't include necessary directions for voting in city and town council elections.
Story
Archive |
| 10/22/2008 |
Ballot printing |
FL |
|
Sarasota County. Election Supervisor omitted the State Senate District 23 race between Republican Nancy Detert and Democrat Morgan Bentley from absentee ballots sent out to voters. Neither campaign was informed by Dent's office and are still wondering how extensive the problem is. Detert said she had noticed her race was not included in the sample ballot she received and that a supporter had called her complaining about the omission. Dent's office is sending out letters to the affected voters, along with a complete ballot.
Story
Archive |
| 10/10/2008 |
Ballot printing |
NY |
|
Renssalaer County. Paper ballots were printed with the name of the Democratic candidate for president as "Osama" rather than "Obama".
Story |
| 5/6/2008 |
Ballot printing |
AR |
ESS |
Washington County. Candidates in five district judges' races were mistakenly left off 27,000 Washington County ballots.
The races are uncontested, but each candidate must receive at least one vote to be elected. A small batch was reprinted correctly for early voting for the May 20 primary.
Story
Archive |
| 4/22/2008 |
Ballot printing |
IN |
Microvote |
Shelby County. Candidates were in the wrong order on the printed ballot and the Infinity e-voting machine. After an Elections Board hearing requested by one of the candidates, the error was corrected on both.
Story |
| 4/22/2008 |
Ballot printing |
PA |
|
Philadelphia. Backup paper ballots had Clinton's name, but not Obama's.
Story
Archive |
| 3/24/2008 |
Ballot printing |
CA |
ESS |
Sacramento County. ES&S miscalibrated the precinct optical scanners, and the tinting on the ballots was so dark that the scanners mis-read the votes. Ballots had to be taken back to the central office to be scanned.
"During its investigation, the county said that the vendor that supplies and maintains the scanners, Elections Systems & Software, conducted improper recalibration and preventive maintenance on the machines in December. In addition, the report said that ballots printed by Consolidated Printers were too dark to allow the ballot to be correctly read by the faulty scanners."
Story
Archive |
| 3/4/2008 |
Ballot printing |
OH |
|
Cuyahoga County. Ballots were printed with a stub that says "Do not remove." Poll workers are telling voters that they should remove the stub. County officials say the ballots will count either way.
Story
Archive |
| 2/14/2008 |
Ballot printing |
OH |
Diebold |
Lucas County. The Lucas County Board of Elections has discovered an error in its ballot that could lead Democratic voters to vote for both presidential candidates. The error is that Democratic voters might be asked to vote for delegates and alternates for their choice of presidential candidate both in the congressional district and statewide.
Story
Archive |
| 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
|
| 11/14/2006 |
Ballot printing |
CO |
Sequoia |
Denver. Sequoia misprinted the barcodes that identify precincts on absentee ballots, so the county has to sort 70,000 ballots into the 23 different ballot styles. "Sequoia's vice president of communications, Michelle Shafer, did not return four calls and pages seeking comment."
Story
Archive |
| 11/13/2006 |
Ballot printing |
AR |
ESS |
Crawford County. ES&S provided the ballot printer with the wrong format, and the software provided by ES&S for the scanners wouldn't read the ballots, which had to be counted by hand.
Story
Archive
11/14/06 update - County Clerk Patti Hill and commission members said they have tried repeatedly to contact ES&S officials in the wake of the election and have so far not received any response to messages left on company answering machines. Hill suggested a meeting be called between state election officials, the Arkansas Secretary of State and an executive with ES&S to discuss issues that have arisen in elections and the company’s contract with the state.
Story
Archive |
| 11/7/2006 |
Ballot printing |
CA |
Sequoia |
Alameda County. Poll workers in an estimated 100 polling places or about one in eight had ballots jam in legions of new optical scanners supplied by Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems. The problem apparently was the ballot itself, printed by a private contractor, K&H Integrated Print Solutions, in Everett, Wash. The ballots featured a perforated strip at the top with a voter number that poll workers were to tear off and hand to the voter before inserting the rest of the ballot in the optical scanners. But the perforations were poor to non-existent, according to poll workers and county elections officials, leaving a ragged edge that jammed in the scanners.
Story
Archive |
| 11/5/2006 |
Ballot printing |
IN |
Diebold |
Union County. Ballots in 5 precincts are missing the contest for 1st District Commissioner. Fidlar, who printed the ballots, made the error, which the county officials failed to catch in proofing. The county will provide a supplemental ballot to voters on election day, but 121 absentee ballots that are missing the race have already been cast. These voters are being contacted to come to the courthouse and cast the supplemental ballot.
Story
Archive |
| 11/3/2006 |
Ballot printing |
SC |
|
Charleston County. 5,000 ballots were misprinted, showing a bond amount as $250 million, instead of the correct amount of $205 million.
Story
Archive |
| 11/2/2006 |
Ballot printing |
PA |
|
Monroe County. Ballots were printed without space for write-in votes for Governor and Lt. Governor. Story |
| 10/29/2006 |
Ballot printing |
WA |
|
Skagit County. Ballots were printed without the legally required text describing initiatives. This was discovered only when a voter in Precinct 125 noticed it and reported it to the county and the Secretary of State.
Story
Details
|
| 10/28/2006 |
Ballot printing |
MI |
|
Monroe County. Absentee voters cast one ballot, then another corrected ballot. Ballots supplied by the state to Monroe County had misaligned party titles and fill-in ovals in a section that allows voting by straight party ticket. Some officials were concerned that the misalignment would confuse voters and cause some to unintentionally vote straight party - for the wrong party. New ballots were sent out and the officials are hoping citizens redo their ballots and send them in.
Story
Archive |
| 10/27/2006 |
Ballot printing |
CA |
Sequoia |
Ventura County. Sequoia printed absentee ballots wrong for another region in the county (as well as in Denver CO). "In the Conejo Valley, at least three voters in the past week said their cards did not show races for the Ventura County Community College District Area 2, Conejo Valley Unified School District and the Conejo Recreation and Park District, Browning said. Instead, they were asked to vote for candidates seeking spots on the Casitas Municipal Water District board, which serves the Ojai Valley. "
Story
Archive
|
| 10/27/2006 |
Ballot printing |
OH |
|
Miami County. Issue 5 was incorrectly referred to as a constitutional amendment, instead of a law, on the ballots. Story |
| 10/26/2006 |
Ballot printing |
CA |
Sequoia |
Ventura County. Ojai Valley absentee ballots (printed and sent by Sequoia Voting Systems) are missing the contest for Casitas Municipal Water District. Instead they have the contest for Ventura County Board of Supervisors' Fourth District race — in Simi Valley. The mix-up also eliminated the Ojai Unified School District race from the ballot.
Story
Archive |
| 10/20/2006 |
Ballot printing |
OH |
ESS |
Summit County. A printer certified by ES&S sent 22,000 misprinted ballots to the county. Already late, the delay will make absentee voters wait even longer for their ballots. "When the ballots arrived at the Summit County Board of Elections on Thursday, staff members discovered the second page was fraught with typographical errors." No QA at the printer, it appears.
Story
Archive
10/21/06 - Ballot are supposed to arrive today. The same typographical errors were found on the poll-site ballots, so they will be reprinted, too. A "computer problem" cause the printing error.
Story
Archive |
| 10/12/2006 |
Ballot printing |
CO |
Sequoia |
Denver. Sequoia Voting Systems, printed 44,000 absentee ballots with the "yes" and "no" boxes transposed on the measure for Referendum F, a measure that would change the way recall elections are handled. "Election officials said they had proofed the ballot, and the proof did not contain the error. Somehow, the proof was changed, said commission spokesman Alton Dillard."
Story
Archive
Oct. 27 - The solution. Duplication 30,000 ballots before scanning them. Sequoia, to blame for the error, won't be supplying additional machines to count the transposed yes/no ballots. "These are kind of large, expensive machines, and they don't just have a whole bunch of them sitting around,"
Story
Archive
Oct 28. A new decision. Officials decide the potential for human error in duplicating so many ballots is too high. They will program some of the ballot scanners to read the misprinted ballots.
Story |
| 10/12/2006 |
Ballot printing |
CO |
Sequoia |
Denver. Sequoia's second printing error was instructing voters to use 24 cents less postage than necessary to return the ballots.
Story
Archive |
| 10/11/2006 |
Ballot printing |
MI |
|
Ottawa County. 170,000 ballots were printed with a typo - the "L" was left out of Public in a proposed constitutional amendment.
Story
Archive |
| 11/8/2005 |
Ballot printing |
OH |
|
Lucas County. Hundreds of absentee ballots were late, and several hundred were riddled with errors from the printer.
Story
Archive |
| 11/8/2005 |
Ballot printing |
OH |
ESS |
Sandusky County. M100 optical scanners used by the Sandusky County Board of Elections refused to accept hundreds of ballots because of a printing error.
Story
Archive |
| 11/8/2005 |
Ballot printing |
OH |
Diebold |
Scioto County. Absentee ballots were too wide for the Diebold optical scanner and had to be trimmed with scissors.The ballots were printed by Dayton Legal Blank, Inc, which supplies ballots and services 85 of Ohio's 88 counties. The problem was not detected until live ballots were scanned. Officials describe the machines as "not tested sufficiently." Apparently no absentee ballots were tested.
Story
Archive |
| 11/1/2005 |
Ballot printing |
CO |
|
Boulder County - "The folds in the ballots in Boulder County may cause machines to miscount the votes in the critical statewide Referenda C & D issues."
Arapahoe County - some absentee voters didn't receive their ballots. County officials are investigating.
Story
Archive |
| 10/21/2005 |
Ballot printing |
CA |
Sequoia |
Humboldt County. About 900 voters received incorrect ballots. The elections manager said the error was made by Sequoia Voting Systems. Sequoia Voting Systems is printing correct ballots, which should be in the mail by Saturday, McWilliams said.
Story
Archive |
| 10/20/2005 |
Ballot printing |
CA |
Sequoia |
Santa Clara County. Printing problems have delayed delivery of absentee ballots by a week. When the ballots arrived from the printer (Sequoia Voting Systems), there were problems with the bar coding that ensures only one ballot goes into each envelope, and with the scoring that ensures folds don't interfere with votes.
Story
Archive
|
| 10/19/2005 |
Ballot printing |
CO |
Sequoia |
Arapahoe County. Voters in at least four precincts were mistakenly sent duplicate ballots for the Nov. 1 election. The duplicate mailings are a result of an error on the part of Sequoia Voting Systems, a vendor that the county contracts with to print and mail out ballots.
Story |
| 2/11/2005 |
Ballot printing |
WI |
|
Milwaukee. Two absentee ballot problems that occurred in the November election "are both serious. In the first case, some residents who sought ballots were unable to vote. In the second, 238 ballots that did come almost missed being counted. It took special permission from the state Elections Board to allow those 238 ballots to be counted, something that did not happen until nearly a month after the hard-fought election."
Story
|
