Voting Machine Mess-up Du Jour (Displayed 07/13/04)

Palm Beach County, Florida. March 2002. Sequoia AVC Edge paperless voting machine Councilman Al Paglia lost by 4 votes on a one-race ballot, but 78 ballots registered as blank. Voters also reported erratic behavior of the touch screens.
	Councilman Al Paglia lost his seat by four votes to Lizbeth Benacquisto during a runoff contest held March 26 in Wellington, a town of 42,000 in central Palm Beach County. Although Paglia and Benacquisto were the sole candidates on the ballot, 78 so-called undervotes were registered, meaning 78 voters used the machine but did not cast a ballot. That struck Paglia as odd because he'd garnered 45 percent of the votes during the primary run against three challengers. And then, he too began hearing stories from voters that the Sequoia touch screens had acted erratically.

* Out of Touch: You press the screen. The machine tells you that your vote has been counted. But how can you be sure? New Times. April 24, 2003; By Wyatt Olson.