Ugly truth about the January 30 election

The ugly truth is that Denver has hired Sequoia Voting Systems to provide election services for the January 30 vote. Sequoia is the vendor whose mistakes created havoc for Denver voters in previous elections. The list of Sequoia's recent mistakes is long:

• Aug. 8, 2006: Sequoia's "card activators" brought up incorrect ballots on voting machines during the primary, creating confusion and delays at the polls. The activators were purchased second-hand by Denver after the equipment was blamed for problems in Chicago's election.
• Oct. 11, 2006: Sequoia somehow changed an approved ballot proof, mistakenly transposing the "yes" and "no" boxes on a ballot question. The mistake resulted in 44,000 voters receiving misprinted absentee ballots.
• Oct. 12, 2006: Sequoia miscalculated the return postage for thousands of absentee ballots. Envelopes incorrectly instructed voters to affix 63 cent postage instead of 87 cents. Later, it was discovered that the stuffed envelopes were too thick to be opened with an automatic letter opener, resulting in some ballots being shredded as they were opened.
• Nov. 7, 2006: Sequoia's pollbook software failed, causing unpardonable delays and frustration at the polls. Sequoia created the pollbook especially for Denver for $85,000.
• Nov. 7, 2006: One of two absentee ballot scanners made by Sequoia broke down, slowing the vote count.
• Nov. 14, 2006: Misprinted bar codes on 70,000 absentee ballots required five days of hand-sorting of 23 ballot styles. Sequoia misprinted the bar codes and mailed out the absentee ballots directly to voters under a contract with Denver. The misprint created further delays in Denver's vote count.
• Nov. 30, 2006: Sequoia Vice President Howard Cramer told the mayor's investigative panel that Election Day software created for Denver was never meant to be used as an e-pollbook. He claimed that Sequoia had no knowledge of Denver's plan to use the failed software for voter check-in at the polls.
• Nov. 30, 2006: Moments after Cramer's testimony, independent consultants from Fujitsu testified that Sequoia's software did not "meet, or even approach, professional standards." Neither Sequoia nor Denver officials ever adequately tested the pollbook software. "We were able to demonstrate severe degradation of the system within five minutes" of testing, one consultant said. "These are not exotic flaws. They are very basic."
• December 1, 2006: Records exchanged between Sequoia and the Denver Election Commission showed that the commission had asked for Web-based software that could be used to check in voters on Election Day. The documents refuted Cramer's testimony on behalf of Sequoia.

Sequoia has provided substandard products and services to Denver, yet the city is still doing business with Sequoia. (Here's a list of additional Sequoia failures.) Instead of holding Sequoia accountable, city officials are rewarding Sequoia for past mistakes.

The Denver Election Commission should have done a better job to prevent the Election Day debacle. Nonetheless, Sequoia is partly responsible for serious missteps and attempted cover-ups of their own incompetence.

Should Denver continue to entrust elections to Sequoia? If not, vote no on the charter-change question.

The question is a referendum on election integrity. It's an outrage that Denver has hired Sequoia to service the January 30 vote.