Blame game
Friday, Mar 24, 2006 - Posted by Rich Miller
First, Chicago and Cook County elections officials chided the media for being impatient about the vote count. Now, apparently, they finally understand how important this is.
With ballot counting not expected to be done in Cook County until this weekend, election officials said Thursday they may withhold payments to Sequoia Voting Systems until the equipment manufacturer has fixed any problems.
Election officials have acknowledged a lack of training for election judges facing the daunting task of using a new and complex system in Tuesday’s primary. But they increased their public criticism of Sequoia, saying it “did not perform adequately.”
Scott Burnham, a spokesman for Cook County Clerk David Orr, said the county has paid California-based Sequoia about $7.8 million so far. “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.
Whatever. This was a bonehead move on all fronts. Chicago and Cook are by far this company’s largest client, almost guaranteeing problems, and local officials didn’t spend nearly enough time training people how to handle these new machines.
More here and make sure to check out this story today.
- DOWNSTATE - Friday, Mar 24, 06 @ 8:00 am:
Anyone knows that if you make the lock someone will pick it.I see nothing wrong with paper ballots the worked great in our county.
- Randall Sherman - Friday, Mar 24, 06 @ 8:51 am:
Has any reporter checked out just who its this company’s clout? I mean they didn’t get the contracts to service Chicago and suburban Cook County out of boxes of Cracker Jack, did they?
- Truthful James - Friday, Mar 24, 06 @ 11:08 am:
Makes you wonder — if Sequoia is out money, does that mean that the boys that got paid off will have to give some back…ya think?
Thank God every ballot has a paper trail. There are some places outside Illinois which use optical scanners without the paper back up. Lots of problems there — but whatever was in the machine gets counted quickly.
Hmm, or is this just the first pitch to get rid of the paper and rely on the machine machines.
- Chicago girl - Friday, Mar 24, 06 @ 11:09 am:
The problem wasn’t the equipment, the problem was the judges and the judge training. The equipment-by and large-worked fine. The judges, on the other hand, didn’t (although some judges did fine, especially the polling places with younger people–maybe high school or college kids?). The board of Elections is looking for a scapegoat so they don’t get busted for providing terrible training to judges who either didn’t have the capacity to understand the equipment or didn’t care, and were just in it for the $150. Instead of bashing Sequoia, the Board of Elections needs to fire the people who were in charge of training judges–the very tippy top people. They did a terrible job of preparing judges for the election.
- Central IL Stater - Friday, Mar 24, 06 @ 12:50 pm:
Chicago Girl, not sure how training went in Chicago but down here it was fine. Can you tell me what they did to train the judges? Did they get hands on training like we did?
You guys get $150??? DANG. We only get $90 in Champaign.
I was just wondering how training was in different parts of the state. We got training on our equipment but do agree that maybe more was needed. But how many people would stick through more hours of training?
- NW burbs - Friday, Mar 24, 06 @ 3:12 pm:
Anyone else notice that Axelrod was making a big stink about the delay in vote counts re: Claypool’s numbers but not so much of a stink re: the 6th CD’s Cook County numbers…? (Duckworth is an Axelrod client vis a vis the Rahminator.) Of course, the Cook County portion of the 6th would just so happen to be Cegelis’ home base of support (it’s where she lives and where some — certainly not all — of the most active of her grassroots supporters hail from).
- NW burbs - Friday, Mar 24, 06 @ 3:13 pm:
Has any reporter checked out just who its this company’s clout? I mean they didn’t get the contracts to service Chicago and suburban Cook County out of boxes of Cracker Jack, did they?
Sequoia (as opposed to, say, Diebold) is one of the more trusted if, unfortunately, not the biggest of the electronic voting machine corps out there. Fair Voting and other organizations gives Sequoia props.