There are a series of reports on the Orange County Registrar blogsite of problems with voting machines in Orange County today. Two quick observations based on spending the better part of the day in the OC — in the city of Brea. We visited eight polling places in Brea, chosen at random, in the northern part of the city. One of the polling places opened late, because polling place workers couldn’t figure out how to hook up all of the necessary electrical connections in a day care facility at a public school. But throughout, we saw that perhaps one of of eight voting machines were disabled due to problems with the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) devices. Luckily, the VVPAT was being deployed for the first time in the OC in a relatively low-turnout primary, and thus having disabled voting devices was not having much impact today in the OC as there just wasn’t much stress on the electoral system.

More soon, including photos.