From The Onion:
Showing posts with label voting machines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label voting machines. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Voting Problems . . . Again
The Washington Post reports:
Scores of voters in Rockville, who are choosing a new mayor and four City Council members today, were mistakenly identified as having already voted by absentee ballot when they arrived this morning at polling places throughout the city.
The error, which raised concerns among candidates about double-voting, occurred after the State Board of Elections sent Rockville officials the wrong copy of a voter database.
"It was our mistake, and we'll review our procedures to make sure this type of mistake doesn't happen again," said Ross Goldstein, deputy administrator for the elections board. The state's list marked voters with a home address that begins with the number five as absentee voters in the electronic poll books.
Goldstein said city election officials were instructed to allow these voters to cast ballots on touch-screen machines and to keep track of their names in handwritten lists. To ensure that voters are casting only one ballot, Goldstein said officials are being told to compare the names of the voters affected by the glitch to those who actually cast absentee ballots. He estimated that roughly 10 percent of Rockville's 28,000 registered voters were affected.
Friday, November 02, 2007
New Voting Machines in Gaithersburg
Gaithersburg's election for three seats on the City Council is attracting more attention than usual (see here and here). However, it's new voting machines are not according to the Gazette:
No one attended a seminar Friday afternoon at City Hall about how to operate the machines, said Sarah Paxton, executive assistant to the city manager and an elections coordinator. The AccuVote, which will be at all voting locations in the city, provides voters with a sequentially numbered paper ballot, which they can shade with a pen or pencil and insert into the machine. Voters can review their ballot before it is optically scanned and tallied.Unfortunately, interest in voting machines has died down since last year's fiasco in the Democratic primary. The budget deficit isn't helping matters either.AutoMARK is for the disabled and resembles a fax machine. Its accessories include headphones for the visually impaired, a ‘‘puffer tube” for voters unable to use their arms, a Braille pad and a foot pedal to control the size of the type.
This machine will be available only at City Hall, though disabled voters may use it regardless of their precinct.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Another Reason to Dump DREs?
Bradblog reports that undervotes by Latinos and Native Americans plummetted after New Mexico shifted from DREs to optical scan paper ballots. Undervotes are when a voter went to the polls and cast a ballot but no vote was recorded for an office. Democrats should check out these results and consider their implications as both of these groups tend to favor their party.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Voting Reform Debate Continues
State Administrator of Elections Linda Lamone has long been the state's most ardent defender of the much despised touch-screen voting machines. In testimony before Sheila Hixon's (D-Silver Spring) House Ways and Means Committee, Lamone proposed allowing voters who don't trust the machines to vote on paper but says that there is not enough time to wholly switch voting systems.
The time issue seems at least a bit of a red herring. Couldn't some counties shift to a new system even if there is not enough time for all to make the change? And even if we really cannot do it by 2008, shouldn't we begin a change now so we can do it by 2010? Otherwise, won't we hear the same excuses again after 2008? It seems that there is not enough time if we have a long debate over the new system but that we could make a shift if the legislature settled on an alternative in short order.
Lamone's proposal is even more mysterious, however, because one would assume that operating two systems of voting might be more confusing than simply changing from one to the other. However, Lamone's proposal was not clear in the Gazette article. Is she essentially proposing that the state misuse provisional ballots and allow people who prefer paper to vote that way? Or is she proposing a separate set of paper ballots? If so, how would they be counted?
Anyone out there have more information?
Friday, February 02, 2007
Florida Ditching Touch Screens
According to the New York Times, the Republican governor of Florida has announced a plan to replace touch-screen voting machines with paper ballots counted by scanning machines. The fifteen Florida counties affected by the change contain 54 percent of Florida voters. Replacing the machines will cost $32 million.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
