The jury is still out on e-voting machines used in the election

The jury is still out on e-voting machines used in the election but reports collected by late Tuesday evening by election watchdogs seem to contradict assurances by voting company representatives that the election should "put to rest the unreasonable suspicion" about e-voting machines. The National Protection Coalition, composed of several nonpartisan groups that include the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Verified Voting, reported Tuesday afternoon it had received more than 600 calls from voters complaining about problems with e-voting machines around the country. A separate group, Common Cause, reported receiving 50,000 calls, though not all of them were related to voting technology. Both groups had established toll-free phone lines for voters to report problems. The National Protection Coalition received 80 reports of problems in New Orleans where machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems failed to start on election morning, resulting in voters being turned away from polls because election officials didn't have a back-up plan. By late afternoon some machines still had not booted up. Lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and EFF filed a complaint in Civil District Court for the Parish of New Orleans to force election officials to keep the parish polls open longer to accommodate voters disenfranchised by the faulty machines. Sequoia did not return a call for comment by press time. In Florida, where George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election by only 537 votes, 10 touch-screen voting machines failed at precincts in Broward County.