Intellectual Property Law

In Palm Beach County, Florida, concerns have been raised about folded absentee ballots that have creases where races are printed. The creases could prevent optical-scanners from accurately reading the races.

Election officials found that during early voting Sequoia optical-scan machines sometimes mistook the crease in paper ballots for a vote. They discovered the problem because the machines are programmed to reject ballots that have overvotes in a race -- more than the number of votes that are allowed in a race. The Palm Beach ballot is designed with broken arrows next to candidates' names, that readers are supposed to connect to mark their vote. But machines were reading the creases as a connected arrow and recording votes for more than one candidate.

When this occurred, officials would duplicate the ballot and scan the duplicate.

One candidate whose race is printed in the spot where voters fold their mail-in ballots expressed concern that if the machine mistakenly reads a crease as one vote instead of two, then the machine would never kick it out, and officials would never know it had read the ballot incorrectly.

The candidate requested that all absentee ballots be inspected by hand. But the county canvassing board rejected that suggestion on legal grounds. The board noted that if a race is close, the losing candidate will be able to use the crease as grounds to challenge the results.

Election officials in Colorado are concerned about a different problem with their scanners.

In Boulder County, they're concerned that dust in the crease of mail-in ballots could lead to inaccurate results when put through the scanner. Boulder uses optical-scan machines made by Hart InterCivic.

Hart InterCivic machines in Washington state had precisely this problem during the 2004 election. And, as I reported yesterday, in Oakland County, Michigan, officials recently discovered that dust and debris have been the cause of inconsistent results that their optical scanners produced during logic and accuracy tests that were conducted in the run-up to the general election. Oakland County uses optical-scan machines made by Election Systems & Software.

Dust issues can be easily remedied by cleaning the scanners during heavy use. Boulder County has opted to clean dusty ballots before scanning them.

See also:

• ES&S Voting Machines in Michigan Flunk Tests, Don't Tally Votes Consistently