Posted on 03/02/2004 9:32:23 AM PST by heleny
PROBLEMS REPORTED WITH NEW VOTING MACHINES
(03-02-2004) - Reports of problems with the new touch-screen voting machines began flooding the Registrar of Voter's office Tuesday within an hour of the polls opening, officials said.
Voters experienced problems with the cards used in the voting process, said Monique Roberts, an employee at the Registrar's office in Kearny Mesa.
When the card was inserted, a different screen popped up on the computer than the one voters should have been using, Roberts said.
Problems were reported in El Cajon, Scripps Ranch, Del Mar, Golden Hill and other communities throughout the county, where about 10,000 touch screen machines were being used for the first time Tuesday, county officials said.
Voters who called the registrar's hotline for help were given guidance on how to get to the correct screen, Roberts said.
In addition, employees from the registrar's office were being dispatched to polling places throughout the county to check on the problems and help walk voters through the process.
"I hope the voters will be patient with our workers," Registrar Sally McPherson told KUSI. "The computers themselves are not down. This is a new process, but it will be fixed soon."
Voters experiencing problems can call the Registrar of Voters hotline at (858) 565-5800 or vote at the registrar's office, located at 5201 Ruffin Road, Suite I in San Diego. Polls are open until 8 p.m.
Originally, the workers turned on the machines this morning, but because of lack of training, they did not know they had to click through some windows to start up the program. Then, when they called the Registrar's office, they couldn't get through because everyone else was calling.
So, people who went to the polls in the first two hours or so (After polls opened at 7 AM) were unable to vote there and had to go to the Registrar's office in Kearny Mesa, the only place with punchcard (paper) ballots. Of course, that office was then overwhelmed with long lines.
Having opposed the touch-screen system, I'm loving it. We should've gone all optical (color in the dot--what the absentees get now) if we really had to make a change. There's nothing better than a real paper ballot.
The weather forecast is for showers today, so the voters who were turned away at the polls and either found the Kearny Mesa lines too long or lived in a different area of the county (say, 30 miles away in Oceanside) may skip voting altogether if it's raining when they get off work.
Too bad, because San Diego County is generally more Republican and more opposed to Propositions 55/56 than LA County or the SF Bay area.
Anyone who still wants to use a paper ballot instead of the touchscreens can vote here:
San Diego County Registrar of Voters
5201 Ruffin Road, Suite I
San Diego, CA 92123
For General Information Call: (858) 565-5800
I vote absentee in a different county, so I still got punchcards (but I think they may use touchscreens on election day, too).
I like the idea of optical Scantron-type ballots, too. There's a paper trail, and they're harder to tamper than punchcards. Punchcards are probably the easiest for the voters to understand and vote correctly, but elementary school kids already all know how to fill in scantron forms.
Unfortunately, some people believe any glitzy new technology is better than a tried-and-true older technology, even when the older way is more reliable.
I'll wait to see if there's any outrage over the SD polls effectively opening one to two hours late.
If this happened in poor or minority cities, you can imagine the ACLU jumping all over the news, claiming that the election results were unfair and that poor people were disenfranchised, or pollworkers allowing the polls to stay open late. Will the ACLU even notice when rich Republicans are disenfranchised?
I agree. Absentee voting is so convenient, too.
Computerized voting would be great for overseas military, since mailing paper ballots takes a much longer time for them.
If not, the error rate is hard to fathom. Two percent is like every other person when ballots have many offices/judges/propositions.
The combined undervote and overvote, or error rate, averaged 2.23% for counties using pre-scored punch card machines - more than twice the error rate for any other type of machine or system used in other California counties, and nearly four times the error rate of Riverside County's touch-screen voting machines. The error rate in Los Angeles County was 2.7%, or four and a half times the rate for Riverside, at .59%. The number of overvotes and undervotes in Los Angeles county alone - 72,000 - is greater than the entire number of registered voters in 26 California counties.
Republicans to inspect impounded New Mexico ballots
Had forgotten about this. I thought I remembered NM being a close state.
Computerized voting prevents overvotes and unintentional undervotes, but the error rate (as calculated from all overvotes and undervotes) for non-computerized voting fails to allow for intentional undervoting and intentional overvoting. So, it always seems improper for politicians to use these figures to force a change to computerized voting.
The error rate for computerized systems also fails to account for disenfranchised voters (such as those yesterday across San Diego County) who were prevented from voting because the computer programs malfunctioned.
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