S.F. prepares to sue voting machine company

[babylonsister]

S.F. prepares to sue voting machine company

John Wildermuth, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, November 8, 2007

After a low-turnout election that still might take weeks to resolve, San Francisco is preparing to sue the company that supplied its voting machines.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a notice of default Wednesday, arguing that Nebraska-based Election Systems and Software had breached its contract by selling the city uncertified voting machines and refusing to pay the estimated $300,000 it cost San Francisco to meet special state requirements for counting the vote on the company's machines.

Because of those requirements, which mandate special handling for each of the ballots cast in Tuesday's election, the final results might not be known until Thanksgiving.

"It's a travesty, an absolute travesty," Herrera said at a news conference in front of the City Hall election office Wednesday. "We're in this position for one and only one reason: The election vendor failed to live up to the terms of the contract."

ES&S should either quickly resolve the problems that have plagued the city or be replaced by another company in time for the February presidential primary, the city attorney said.

The company has balked at the idea of covering the city's extra costs for the election. Although Secretary of State Debra Bowen ordered ES&S to reimburse the city, the company said in an Oct. 18 letter that it does not believe the state has the authority to order that payment.

more...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/08/BAN2T84D2.DTL

[nebula]

1. This company should be barred

from doing business in California at all.

[MzNov]

2. A friend of mine in Burlingame

said ALL the voting machines were electronic!!! I asked her why there wasn't just one for handicapped voters. She said there was one, and all the rest were electronic.

Isn't this the opposite of what Debra Bowen said??? There is to be only one electronic machine at each polling station?

WTF is going on? Looks like they pulled the same trick in SF.


:grr: :grr: