Meeting set with vote machine company (PA) Litigation?

[Wilms]

Meeting set with vote machine company

Published: Wed, Jan 26, 2005

The committee met Tuesday with legal counsel to discuss possible litigation.

MERCER, Pa. — The Independent Election Committee of Mercer County has decided to delay issuing its final report for a week to allow it to meet with the president of Unilect.

Members agreed Tuesday that they cannot make a recommendation on future use of the computerized voting machines until they discuss the problems that occurred in the Nov. 2 general election with Jack Gerbel, president of the California company that sold the county the voting machines.

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On Tuesday, committee members held a half-hour private session with county Solicitor Mark Longietti to discuss the county's 2001 purchase agreement with Unilect. The private session was to discuss potential strategy for litigation against Unilect. Members have previously discussed options such as forcing Unilect to revamp the machines to avoid future problems. At first it was believed that the only problem was a coding error which rendered machines inoperable in 12 precincts Election Day.

However, the committee has since discovered that even precincts that experienced no difficulties had a high-enough undervote to indicate problems with their machines. Undervotes are ballots for which no votes were recorded for president. Percentages in Mercer County were significantly higher than average.

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