brennan center for justice

November2004November2004November2002November2002ES&SM550ES&SM650ES&SM100Sequoia:EdgeNebraskaNebraskaNebraskaNevadaAccording to the Billings Gazette, a programmingerror caused voting machines to inaccurately recordall votes. An election official explained that hesuspected the problem had occurred because heforgot to hit the “zero out” button required betweenentering absentee and regular ballots on the machine.Consequently, as many as 3,000 absentee ballots mayhave been counted a second time when the regularballots were being run through the machines.Officials decided to conduct a full recount to ensurethat the election outcome was accurate. 414Lancaster County, NEThe Lincoln Star Journal reported that a number ofmalfunctions occurred on optical scan machines inuse during the general election. According to thepaper, some machines shut down completely. Whenthe problems began, election officials stopped to testthe six machines, revealing that two were notproducing correct vote tallies. Those two machineswere shut down, but later in the day, the remainingmachines began to have similar mechanicalproblems. 415Sarpy County, NELocal TV news station WOWT 6 reported that afterballots were counted in a race for city council,election officials realized that there were more votesthan voters. According to the officials, the erroraffected 32 of 80 precincts and as many as 10,000votes. It was believed that the glitch affected thecandidates equally and did not alter the outcome ofthe elections. The evidence and explanation for themiscount were inconclusive at the time. 416Sarpy County, NEAccording to the Omaha World-Herald, the opticalscan machines failed to tally “yes” votes on theGretna school-bond issue, giving the false impressionthat the measure was defeated. The measure hadactually passed by a 2-1 margin. 417Clark County, NVAccording to the Albuquerque Tribune, the softwareused to aggregate the vote totals on a Sequoia votingsystem was overwhelmed by the volume of ballotscast and omitted some votes from total reports.74 | Brennan Center for Justice