Other breakdowns were too isolated to cause concern, as when 800 slot machines failed in Delaware and toll roads around Sao Paulo, Brazil, could not provide valid receipts.
Mr. Finch's campaign manager, Tyrone McClain, said the optical scanning system voting machines failed in one Bridgeport district, forcing pollsters to hand-count about 70 votes.
More than 60 touch-screen machines failed in Marion County, Ind., for several hours, possibly because of battery problems or the memory cards' being inserted upside-down, election officials said.
Immediately, the world seemed to change for the better: Denny's suddenly tasted good again, voting machines failed in bold new ways, and millions of people were able to loosen up and finally laugh at the hilarious punch line that was their entire life savings.
Michael Shamos, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who has examined voting-machine systems for more than 25 years, estimates that about 10percentt of the touch-screen machines "fail" in each election.
Several large counties, including Los Angeles and San Diego, are still using punch-card voting machines that failed in Florida in 2000, and many counties are being forced to consolidate polling places because they do not have the time or money to conduct a full-scale election.
The machine, a series of spinning disks that moves the ferrite through its reactions, stalled when parts of the machine's rings failed in the intense heat.
Whenever a machine fails, it causes not only delay in the expected production but also reduction in expected profit.
The clip comes after a challenging quarter for Keurig, in which sales of its machines failed to meet expectations, in part due to "very public consumer frustration over 2.0 and this issue", said UBS financial analyst Stephen Powers.
