The vendor representative is supposed to examine the machines for missing or damaged parts. The report reveals that a voting machine vendor is the first to examine the machines when they arrive to the state's voting machine warehouse from the manufacturer. One interesting tidbit turned up in the quality-control report that examined the state board of elections acceptance and testing process.
The machines have not yet been federally certified, though Kellner says Sequoia assured the state last January that federal testing and certification would be completed on the system by April or May, before the state began its own testing and certification of the equipment. The Sequoia ImageCast machines were designed exclusively for New York and are not currently being used in any other state. Nassau County began receiving its machines from the state in June, which suggests that the machines may have been rushed through production too quickly.Ī Sequoia spokeswoman would say only that the company is working with state officials "to identify and resolve any voting equipment concerns they may have." A press release on Sequoia's site noted that Jaco won the contract to produce 4,500 optical-scan machines for Sequoia/Dominion only in April of this year and needed to add 40 to 50 people to its workforce to fulfill the contract. The ImageCast machines are not actually made by Sequoia but by a Canadian subcontractor named Dominion, which is based in Toronto, and a sub-subcontractor named Jaco Electronics, based in New York.
#IMAGECAST MACHINES CRACKED#
īiamonte, who respects Kellner and thinks he feels as frustrated by Sequoia as he does, nonetheless called the report "ridiculous" and "disingenuous," saying that cracked screens and jammed printers weren't the result of communication problems. The firm's report found that the Board of Elections' procedures for accepting and testing the machines were adequate, but acknowledged that some problems may have occurred due to a lack of communication between state election officials and county officials. That review was completed Thursday by a quality-control firm hired by the Board of Elections. It also requested a review of the state Board of Elections' acceptance and testing procedures. Nassau County, which has nearly 900,000 registered voters, is slated to receive 450 machines total, but has refused delivery on the remaining machines and has asked a federal court to order Sequoia to repair the machines.
How do we know if we really do have a printer failure?" We cannot in confidence send (them) out to a polling place knowing they have this printer error. "Say you buy a brand new car and it works good but the oil gauge isn't working. "How is that acceptable?" Biamonte asked. Other machines had dead batteries or batteries that wouldn't hold a two-hour charge, as they were required to do. Some of the latter machines, he said, shook dramatically when they were running and workers either had to shut them down or the machines shut themselves down from the vibration. Another 58 machines exhibited problems during testing, according to William Biamonte, the Democratic elections commissioner for Nassau County. The county rejected 48 machines right at delivery, due to physical damage.
The problems include printers jamming, broken monitors and wheels, machines that wouldn't boot up, and misaligned printer covers that prevented the covers from closing completely, creating security concerns. In Nassau County alone, the largest voting district outside of New York City, officials found problems with 85 percent of the 240 ImageCast machines it received so far – problems that the county characterized in a letter as "substantial operational flaws that render them unusable or that require major repairs." The Board of Elections is examining all of the new machines before sending them out to counties. "These are serious glitches that should have been picked up in the vendor's own quality-control process," he said.īut Sequoia isn't the only problem, according to counties who have reported receiving problematic machines from the state Board of Elections after the board was supposed to have tested and certified the machines.