Registrars defend ballots

San Jose Mercury News ^ | 09/16/03 | Katherine Corcoran

[gubamyster]

Posted on Tue, Sep. 16, 2003

By Katherine Corcoran Mercury News

For 25 years, every statewide office-holder in California from U.S. senator to insurance commissioner has been elected with punch-card ballots. But on Monday, a trio of federal judges said those ballots can't be trusted.

In the six counties still using punch cards -- central to the federal appeals court ruling -- local elections officials said they've had few problems with the ballots over the years, and that they are confident they could run a fair election using them three weeks from now.

[heleny]

Sally McPherson, the San Diego registrar of voters, said SD had a 0.3% overvote and 1.7% undervote for the 2000 Presidential election (among votes for President only). But, these "errors" are due to voters' own inadvertent mistakes or their intentional invalid votes -- not errors from cards or machines.

The punch card hardware is completely accurate. She cited a tie in the 2002 Otay Mesa Water District. The winner was decided by a coin-flip, and the loser requested a manual recount, which took a few days to complete. The result was still the same tie, indicating that the punchcard reading machines had made no errors.

[Revolting cat!]

This court cites the defendants for contempt of court for trying to confuse the court with facts!

[Sabertooth]

My neighborhood's been using punch cards for years.
There's no problem here.

[heleny]

While Roger Hedgecock says the 0.3% who overvoted are morons who could not follow directions, I think some may have still been intentional.

For instance, let's say someone really didn't want to vote for President but really cared about some local election or proposition. He could simply skip the Presidential section, but then he always runs the risk that someone else might punch his ballot. If the voter wanted to be 100% sure that he would not influence the Presidential vote, since there is no "no" vote, he could simply invalidate his Presidential vote by voting for more than one candidate.

[heleny]

My neighborhood's been using punch cards for years. There's no problem here.

Same here! I don't see how people could misunderstand the clear voting directions, and the machine counters are very reliable, too. But, my county wasn't part of the ACLU lawsuit because either it isn't as large as those counties or it doesn't have as high a proportion of certain minorities as those counties.

[harpo11]

Lived in a county that used punch card ballots, no problemo!

[tubebender]

Her is a interesting example of punch card voting.. Mendocino County

[DoctorZIn]

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