• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
PoliticsPolitics

Glitches in new voting system blight California primary

By
The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Down Arrow Button Icon
March 5, 2020, 9:44 AM ET
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

A series of changes in California meant to boost voter turnout and smooth its new Super Tuesday primary election led to a surge in last-minute voters, computer problems and short-staffing that appeared to catch elections officials by surprise, triggering scathing criticism Wednesday.

Long lines, sluggish computer connections and general confusion plagued polling places statewide — raising serious questions about the ability of the most populous state to handle November’s general election, when millions more voters are expected. Critics called for an overhaul before then.

Los Angeles County rolled out a new $300 million voting system, including new scanning devices and voting machines that the state certified despite known security and technical problems. Many of the voting devices didn’t work and there were not enough check-in machines or poll workers, leading to wait times of two hours or more.

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign filed a legal complaint in the county that has more than a quarter of California’s 20 million voters, a county supervisor demanded an investigation and a Democratic Party leader gave a stinging rebuke of the “abysmal” infrastructure.

“It was an overwhelming experience during a time where voter turnout should have been high,” county party chairman Mark J. Gonzalez said in a statement. “It’s Turn OUT, not Turn AWAY.”

Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat who oversees California’s elections, did not respond to multiple requests for detailed explanations Tuesday and Wednesday.

The state voter database was not available part of Tuesday, so poll workers in 15 counties could not print out ballots, register voters or check whether voters had already cast ballots. Some counties said the system was slow all day. A spokesman for Padilla said there was no evidence of malicious activity but did not explain what caused the failure.

“We tried a lot of new things, and we’re going to need to make adjustments,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. “It was not good timing to roll out all this new technology in a major election.”

A crush of voters in the 15 counties that replaced traditional neighborhood polling places with fewer multipurpose vote centers delayed the reporting of results in some counties. The centers, where people could register and vote, were designed to make voting more convenient.

In Butte County in Northern California, registrar Candace Grubbs said she delayed reporting initial results Tuesday night because so many voters were still in line and she didn’t want to influence their vote.

Connections to the state database were sluggish all day, contributing to the long lines, she said.

“Voting centers were designed by academic liberals, but are not practical,” said Bob Mulholland, a Democratic National Committee member in Chico. “I’m very disappointed that California, technology capital of the world, has lines four or five hours long and software that’s breaking down all over the place.”

Mulholland said he warned early on that voting centers did not make sense in a densely populated state like California, where many voters live in cities. He said he received calls Wednesday that the last Butte County votes were not cast until 12:20 a.m.

“California brags about early voting — actually it ended up causing late voting,” he said.

State lawmakers will likely launch an informal inquiry after ballot counting concludes, said Democratic Sen. Tom Umberg, chairman of the Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee.

“Our job is to do better. That’s our job. So if people decided not to vote because the lines are too long? That means we need to fix it,” he said. “We don’t want to have people waiting in long lines in November.”

A bottleneck of angry voters led to wait times of up to four hours in Los Angeles County, according to Sanders’ lawsuit filed late Tuesday. He went on to win California, which has the nation’s largest haul of Democratic delegates.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn called the problems unacceptable and called for an investigation to be completed within 30 to 60 days.

“Certainly you expect some bugs in the system, but I was uncomfortable with what I was hearing yesterday,” she said Wednesday.

County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan apologized late Tuesday. He called it “a challenging day” and acknowledged that the system in which 979 vote centers replaced more than 4,500 polling places “needs quite a bit of refinement.” He hasn’t responded to repeated requests for more details.

The county’s new touch-screen voting devices, meant to boost accessibility, operated slowly at times because so many voters were trying to use them at once, said Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for Logan. More devices were added at some polling places and there were no indications of security breaches, he said.

“I think we perhaps overestimated how many of those voters would take advantage of the early voting period,” Logan said.

Election integrity activists had warned that the county’s system was bound to experience serious failures and should never have been certified by the state. Technical and security defects had been identified in testing, including the ability for attackers to bypass seals, locks and sensors and boot from a USB port, which could allow election data to be modified.

More must-read stories from Fortune:

—Are we undergoing an industrial revolution or a phase change?
—Twitter’s testing new ways to fight misinformation. Is open-source the answer?
—Meet Trump’s Giuliani-approved power broker—and Melania’s new senior adviser
—Angela Merkel is on her way out. Meet her potential replacements
—How the 2020 election could influence your personal finances

Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.

About the Author
By The Associated Press
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Politics

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Politics

Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist.
EconomyU.S. economy
‘It’s fair to ask whether it was worth it’: The Iran war has cost Americans $1,000 per household—and that’s a conservative estimate, Mark Zandi says
By Tristan BoveJuly 1, 2026
11 hours ago
Melania Trump NFT earnings surge 28x in 2025 as the First Lady rakes in nearly $17 million in total earnings, filing shows
PoliticsDonald Trump
Melania Trump NFT earnings surge 28x in 2025 as the First Lady rakes in nearly $17 million in total earnings, filing shows
By Mia OsmonbekovJuly 1, 2026
11 hours ago
Donald Trump sits at his desk in the Oval Office, smiling and with his hands folded in front of him.
PoliticsDonald Trump
Trump got a $78K pension from the Screen Actors Guild in 2025 because he appeared in Home Alone 2 in 1992
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 1, 2026
12 hours ago
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
AIAnthropic
Anthropic’s AI models are back online after a two-week government standoff—settling the company and administration into a fragile truce
By Tristan BoveJuly 1, 2026
13 hours ago
US President Donald Trump during a Presidential memorandum signing in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, June 29, 2026.
PoliticsDonald Trump
Inside Trump’s finances: World Cup tickets, a $250,000 golf sculpture, over $1 billion in crypto earnings, and a merch machine
By Eleanor PringleJuly 1, 2026
18 hours ago
senate
CommentaryCongress
One rare bipartisan AI bill is moving through Congress. Here’s why it deserves to pass
By Neil Björkman and Betsy BrewerJuly 1, 2026
18 hours ago

Most Popular

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
Big Tech
As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 1, 2026
22 hours ago
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Success
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
By Sydney LakeJune 25, 2026
7 days ago
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
Newsletters
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
By Diane BradyJuly 1, 2026
20 hours ago
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
Success
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
By Preston ForeJune 27, 2026
5 days ago
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 1, 2026
17 hours ago
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
Success
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
By Sydney LakeJune 29, 2026
3 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.