Election Offical Says The Last Few Days Have Been “Extremely Embarrassing”
Sequoia, As Usual,  Blames The Election Workers

Responding to widespread failures in Tuesday’s primary elections Cook County and Chicago election officials have announced they will withhold payments to Sequoia Voting Systems until the vendor has fixed the system, which “did not perform adequately.” The county has already paid Sequoia $7.8 million of their $23.8 million contract with Sequoia.

"Nothing worked," Deborah Stein, board member of the Chicago Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Illinois told the Tribune. "They must have worked for 15 to 20 minutes to get it together. They acknowledged that they had not run a test on it before today. So they're pulling it out of the box."

Scott Burnham, a spokesman for Cook County Clerk David Orr, said. "we will not make additional payments until we are satisfied with the system," he said.

"There will be contract ramifications from their performance," said Langdon Neal, chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, noting that about $15 million of the city's portion of the Sequoia contract remains unpaid.As the counting continues, the lack of final totals has left several area communities uncertain about referendum outcomes for libraries and other projects. With 96 percent in, a tight race also remains for the Republican nomination in the 15th District for the Cook County Board between Carl Hansen and Timothy Schneider.

After seeing scanners jam on 21-inch ballots, Neal promised "extensive testing" before those machines are redeployed. He said efforts would be made to simplify the machine that is supposed to combine results from the two voting systems and transmit them downtown.

Neal, who called the last few days "extremely embarrassing," said the most severe problems were primarily limited to about 15 percent of precincts. He said at least some memory cards containing vote totals were defective or damaged, perhaps because they were inserted into a compiling machine while it was on, even though that is something Sequoia warned against doing. Paper trails are available for both voting systems, if the data storage devices are compromised.

Much of the equipment that caused problems will soon be on its way to Clark County, Nevada where it is hoped it will function better. It's all part of a convoluted, and for Sequoia, lucrative deal in which the vendor will be paid over $4,200 apiece for 10 year machines that Clark County will be sending to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

"This is something we knew about, and elections departments have known about, all along," said Michelle Shafer, a Sequoia spokeswoman. "That is why in training we are so emphatic about turning the machines off before the cartridges are inserted."

Shafer said she had not heard about the possibility of payments being withheld because of the problems. "Right now, we are just working as closely with our clients as we can to close out this election," she said.