“Dallas County elections official promises full review after problems [with new ES&S Voting machines] closed some polling places for hours Saturday” 1/ dallasnews.com/news/elections…
Note that the article does not specify the voting machine supplier or type of voting machine, but I already know they bought ES&S touchscreen ballot marking devices (BMDs). It sounds like it was BMDs that failed but could also have been checkin computers (also ES&S). 2/
3/ “Volunteers did not get voting machines up and running at Owenwood Farm & Neighbor Space on John West Road until 75 minutes after polls opened. Skyline High School also reported an issue with at least one voting machine, according to the county.”
4/ “They were told by a volunteer that the machines were broken and that they would have to go somewhere else. Jones, who had already voted early, said they were never told where else they could go to vote.”
5/ “Scarpello said he didn’t know every issue that occurred at voting sites on Saturday but believed the six sites that county officials reported in a list provided Sunday to The News had the most severe problems.”
6/ “After volunteers at one of the busiest polling places in South Dallas had to turn voters away for nearly four hours Saturday when voting machines stopped working, Dallas County’s top elections official is vowing to review what happened.”
7/ “It wasn’t until 10:30 a.m. that there were enough extension cords and power strips for machines at E.B. Comstock Middle School in southeast Dallas’ District 5.”
8/ “In a statement Monday, Johnson noted many of the polling center issues happening in predominantly minority and low-income communities and that transportation and mobility challenges were also among factors in whether voters sought out other places to cast ballots.”
9/ “Jones said she didn’t know how many people chose not to vote after being stopped, but feared the likelihood was high for many.”
10/ “It hasn’t sat right with me, and it’s hard not to feel like hurt and that something was amiss,” she said. “It reeks of voter suppression. It reeks of incompetence and it smells to the high heavens.”
11/ As described, it sounds like the problems were with the county’s new ES&S ExpressVote touchscreen voting machines (BMDs). I’ve warned about these for years. Compared to a touchscreen, one is much less likely to have trouble getting pen and paper “up and running.”
12/ But journalists sometimes call checkin computers “voting machines.” I believe in Dallas that these were supplied by ES&S too. We shld follow this story carefully. What a nightmare.
13/ “”[W]e train people for a couple of hours on very complex procedures, distribute millions of dollars worth of equipment, put a tremendous burden on them and expect perfection,’ Scarpello said. ‘That expectation is not realistic, but our job is to come as close as we can.’”
14/ Yep. Dallas county uses ES&S BMDs to Mark ur “paper ballot” for you instead of letting u use a pen. (With both BMDs and pen and paper, a scanner is used for the actual counting). For most voters, BMDs are unnecessary. verifiedvoting.org/verifier/ 
15/ As u can see above, Dallas also uses ES&S electronic poll books. The county bought them after spending millions of dollars on poll books from another vendor. It was a big taxpayer waste and made headlines.
16/ I wrote about this yesterday too. Dallas’s election administrator, a Democrat named Toni Pippins-Poole, has a corrupt relationship with ES&S. I believe it was Greg Gordon of McClatchy who broke that story. threadreaderapp.com/thread/1388927…
19/ Experts have warned about the dangers of these new touchscreen machines (BMDs) for years. I wrote about it here. nybooks.com/daily/2019/12/…
20/ Experts also say that machine-marked “paper ballots” are not reliable. A MI study shows that voters notice only 7% of omissions or other inaccuracies caused by machines in marking the paper. Even if they notice, they can’t prove it wasn’t voter error. news.engin.umich.edu/2020/01/new-st…
21/ “‘The implication of our [new] study is that it’s extremely unsafe [to use Ballot Marking Devices], especially in close elections,’ Alex Halderman, a Univ. of Michigan computer science professor & one of 7 authors of the study, said in an interview.’”washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost…
22/ There have been many concerns with ES&S over the years. I wrote about them here. link.medium.com/0XtY6XJJXfb
23/ Stacey Abrams’s group, Fair Fight Action, has concerns with voting machine vendor ES&S too, and wrote this memo titled “ES&S Corruption.” fairfight.com/wp-content/upl…
28/ Last year. Same ES&S system. Yike. Voter suppression? Pen and paper doesn’t have this type of problem.
https://twitter.com/seesay2020/status/1321871446424080384
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