Here is the story in the Daily Collegian from the day before, the day after the elections:
Posted on November 7, 2007 12:59 AM
Student calls attention to flaw in voting system
When Meg Krause went to vote in yesterday's election, she entered the HUB-Robeson Center and showed identification to the student working the polls inside Heritage Hall.
After verifying Krause's name and signature with the list of registered voters, the worker then started logging Krause into one of the touch screen voting systems.
Despite this seemingly perfect display of democracy, there was a major problem. On the verge of being whisked into a booth to commit voter fraud, Krause (junior-public relations) alerted the poll worker that, hours earlier, she had voted at her precinct's other location in the College Township Municipal Building.
"Save my morals and ethics, I could've voted twice today," Krause said. "When you think about what could've happened had this been a national election and people had known about this ... it's pretty bad."
Krause, who was writing a story about the elections for her journalism class, decided to test the system after spotting a second voting location for her precinct at the HUB.
The Centre County Elections and Voter Registration Office split precinct 44 -- which includes the East Halls dorms of Stuart, Stone, Snyder and Hastings -- into two locations to accommodate the on-campus students who had trouble getting to the municipal building in past elections, said Joyce McKinley, director of the Centre County Office of Elections.
Voters with on-campus addresses had to vote in the HUB, while voters with off-campus addresses had to vote in the municipal building, a rule to which McKinley said no exceptions were allowed. McKinley said the voter lists could not be separated because of a state law, so poll workers were instructed to check voters' addresses before allowing them to vote.
Krause, who lives off campus, said the student working the polls at the HUB didn't check her address before letting her vote, only requesting her student ID and signature.
Krause said the error "shows a lack of organization and prior planning on behalf of the elections office."
McKinley said the elections office would have eventually found out that Krause voted twice, the penalty for which is a "stiff fine" and possible jail time. Because of ballot confidentiality, though, McKinley said there would be no way to identify who was voted for or void a double vote.
McKinley said poll workers in both the municipal building and the HUB were trained to check the addresses and reminded again after Krause called McKinley to report the problem.
Greg Smith (junior - political science) said he was a poll worker for precinct 44 in the HUB. He said the students working at the HUB were never told to check voter's addresses before allowing them to vote. Smith said the poll workers were only alerted to check addresses around 3 p.m.
Michael Lenbeck-Edens, judge of elections at the municipal building, said he wasn't told to check voters' addresses before allowing them to vote until 3 p.m. yesterday either, after Krause alerted the elections office of the problem. Two other poll workers at the municipal building said the same thing.
"Normally, we don't check anyone's address," Lenbeck-Edens said. "They sign their name, [we] compare signatures and then they're allowed to vote."
Lenbeck-Edens said the "whole issue could be avoided" if the four dorm buildings in precinct 44 were given their own precinct.
McKinley said that was one possible solution. However, she added that the problem could also be resolved by absorbing the HUB polling location back into the municipal building or not allowing students to serve as poll workers at the HUB in the future.
HUB poll workers declined to comment, but McKinley said this was the first year it was run entirely by students. She said it was "just chaos" at the HUB, adding that precinct 44 in the HUB only had four voters as of 5 p.m.
"We will take it before the board and talk about it. We did this to accommodate students and some groups," she said. "Next year is going to be one whopping big year with the presidential elections, so we have to take this performance into consideration."
Smith said the students running the polling place were not at fault in allowing Krause to nearly vote twice, and the right of running a polling place should not be revoked.
"That would be ridiculous, because we were perfectly fine in the last election," he said. "Students are all really capable and dedicated."
This sounds like a total screw-up by management, whoever that should be.
Yay! Hastings is where I lived as a freshman.
The “election officials” themselves need to be removed from office. The very idea that they so no conflict of interest or ethical problem in the first place, before election day, that the person running the center was leading the “get out the vote” effort for one party. This requires a county, legal investigation and if I were the GOP I’d ask a judge to throw out any election in that particular precinct.
See my post about my recent gig as the Republican Alternate Judge in a Democrat precinct. Our system in Texas detects a lot of people who are registered to vote in two or more counties. It appears that this is about 2% minimum of the electorate. My county automatically cancels the registration of a voter who shows up on the rolls of another county. However, without Republican volunteers working at the polls voter fraud is much easier. In the 1996 election one Democrat precinct in Texas simply waited until the polls closed and cast a straight ticket ballot for every voter who did not show up. Much cheaper than vans and box lunches.