Posted on 10/14/2010 12:06:23 PM PDT by FTJM
The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as "Whitey" on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards -- about half in predominantly African-American areas -- and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.
The misspelling turned up on touch-screen machines in 23 wards overall. Whitney's name is spelled correctly on the machines' initial screens showing all of the candidates' names, but it is misspelled on review screens that later show a voter his or her choices, said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections.
"This is a difficult situation. We'll make the best of it. But the important thing is the name is spelled correctly where it counts, and that's where people are making the selection," Allen said.
Allen said there is not adequate time to reprogram and test machines before Nov. 2. He predicted about 90 percent of the ballots cast that day will be on paper ballots, where Whitney's name is spelled properly.
The city election board plans to post a "candidate-neutral" list at polling places, showing the correctly spelled names of all candidates on the ballot, Allen said.
The snafu, however, has Whitney contemplating legal action to force a fix.
"I don't want to be identified as 'Whitey.' If this is happening in primarily African-American wards, that's an even bigger concern," Whitney told the Chicago Sun-Times. "I don't know if this is machine politics at play or why this happened."
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
To add to the confusion, the Libertarian Party nominee for Governor is named Green.
Can’t be corrected with almost three weeks to go? Bull.
Geez, is this more of Karl Rove’s dispicable antics? In Chicago of all places. Its Selma all over again.
Rich Whitey is on the ballot?
Wow. I didn’t even know Bill Ayres was running for office.
Since the election of 2008, I no longer believe in ‘mistakes’. And why does this kind of thing always seem to happen in Illinois?
The Green Party is nuthin’ but rich whities.
Should be “pinko”.
Just my opinion of course.
Gee, they make a lot of “mistakes” in Illinois. They’re having a little trouble with the “mistake” the made getting the military ballots out, too.
At least they got their BIG mistakes out of Chicago and down to DC.
Oops. One just came back.
“Machine politics” heh heh heh
I hope he’s not running against a black guy named “Nipper.” Some ‘turble’ things could happen if they made a typo there, too.
What a “race” it would be!
It indicates an abysmal condition of software architecture in general when duplicate information is needlessly repeated. The consequences could be worse than turning "Whitney" into "whitey." A candidate should be internally represented by a sequential index into a fixed list so that what appears in confirmation is guaranteed to be what appears in selection.
Must have been programmed by graduates of the Chicago Public Schools.....
Here's his new campaign shirt.
Maybe they can put a little confederate flag icon by his name, just to make it clear.
C’mon now...
They can’t fix the problem on electonic voting machines in 2 weeks?
I call BS.
That should be simple.
I say, “Whitey” is intentional. After all, its the green party candidate. They must figure he’d draw dem votes away, so in black neighborhoods they took this as insurance.
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