Chicago Tribune reporting many problems with Sequoia machines in Illinois

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/newsroom/chi-060321voterproblems,1,1831943.story?coll=chi-news-hed

High-tech voting hits snags

By John McCormick and James Janega
Tribune staff reporters
Published March 21, 2006, 7:39 PM CST


As election officials closed the polls Tuesday evening, reports of glitches from throughout the day continued as both voters and election officials learned how to deal with a new, high-tech voting system in Chicago and suburban Cook County....

At Lowell Elementary School on the city's Northwest Side, the only touch-screen voting machine was locked up around 6 p.m. It had been that way since about 4:30 p.m. after a voter tried to use it and the message: "Election verify. Please wait" appeared on the screen....

On the city's South Side, only Republican ballots registered on the optical scanner at the Providence of God Early Learning Center, 1814 S. Union St. "It's a landslide," Republican election judge David Masak said, trying to diffuse the situation with humor. "As of right now, I can tell you we are officially the only precinct in Chicago that is going 100-percent Republican."...

Of the 57 ballots cast in the 25th Ward's heavily Democratic 31st Precinct, only its seven Republican ballots have been counted. The precinct's 50 Democratic ballots were dropped in a lock box, Masak said, and judges were told to drive them downtown if the machines didn't fix themselves by 7 p.m. In Oak Park, election judges arrived at Barrie Center early Tuesday and discovered the optical scan and touch-screen machines wouldn't work properly. For several hours, voters had to mark their ballots by hand and stick them in a locked box suspended above one of the new machines, which spit out a confusing ribbon of paper that had the judges paging furiously through a 131-page manual for answers....