They still can't count votes in Monmouth County

by: Jason Springer

Thu Jun 04, 2009 at 12:15:00 PM EDT

They did better this time than the problems back in April, but Monmouth County election officials still can't get things right:

This time, results from a half-dozen towns were delayed because of problems in transmitting data from machine cartridges, County Clerk M. Claire French said on Wednesday.
Each voting machine has a cartridge that stores the ballot information after votes are cast. The cartridges are plugged into a card reader that attaches to laptop computers used by municipal clerks, who are to transmit results to central election offices, French said.
However, in several cases after the polls closed Tuesday the cartridges had to be physically transported to central election offices in Freehold, where the data was downloaded, French said.

They said they are studying what went wrong because numerous test runs were done leading up to the election including on Tuesday. But Tuesday night and the April problems aren't the only difficulties they have had in the past:

Two years ago, a delay in tabulations at the county level was blamed on some of the 1,700 local election workers misunderstanding instructions. In the 2008 general election, other technical issues delayed results.

No matter where they decide the blame lies, the constant seems to be the delays. It's not like the county isn't committing the financial resources to try and get it right:

Monmouth County purchased 950 Sequoia vote machines three years ago for $8 million - relying mostly on federal funds - and also spent $80,000 for 60 laptops solely for municipal use on election nights.
Equipment maintenance comes to more than $20,000 annually, and the county has also spent more than $2,000 per election night for on-hand Sequoia representatives.

Can someone explain to me why they are spending over $1300 per laptop for each municipality to rent for 1 night? They could buy them for less and have them to use all year round. And despite that fact that they made this expenditure, things still didn't go smoothly. By this point, I'd be sending my own bill asking for a refund already because they haven't gotten elections right since they switched over to the new Sequoia machines it appears. Coincidence?

Jason Springer :: They still can't count votes in Monmouth County