Nov 07 2006
Indiana, PA Will Be Late Reporting
Glitches in setting up the voting machines in Indiana have made it necessary to keep polls open in some areas to 9:00 PM – making the supposed early indicator races now much later.
In one Indiana county, a court order will keep polls open until nearly nine o’clock tonight. An apparent computer error kept voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts there this morning.
The county clerk says there was a programming error in the cards needed to start the machines. She says all of machines are working now, although the polls are staying open later because of the delay.
In Indiana’s largest county, paper ballots had to be used in more than a-hundred precincts due to scattered problems. Officials said poll workers had trouble setting up some voting machines.
This is a good move. If there are problems creating a late start move the cutoff time back to give people their opportunity to vote. Some PA polls will remain open as well. OK, the nail-biter is going to go on longer than expected!
I live in Indiana and I already voted absentee.
I’m from Canada.
In our elections, we use clearly typed paper ballots with a big white circle (surrounded by black) beside each name.
Any mark in the circle – line, check mark, x, smiley face – qualifies as a vote.
I have scrutineered (helped the Elections Canada folks stay honest) as they counted votes in numerous elections.
Ballot discrepancies are few and far between and after discussing, we can usually agree on it (leftist, rightist, and Marijuana Party).
When we can’t, the Elections Canada folks make a decision and we almost always agree it’s fair.
Our system simply doesn’t have the problems that your reliance on (different and hackable – if only through social engineering) machines gives you.
The way we run an election nationwide is so vastly superior to how you do it. We don’t have quasi-civil war for years afterward and gazillions of conspiracy theories: We just have wins and losses.
You really, really need to make national elections a federal responsibility, use paper ballots exclusively, and develop some common sense standards.
Don’t blame Canada. This is a peculiarly American set of screw-ups.
Well these problems were in Delaware county, Muncie and everyone is blaming everyone else. We have used electronic voting machines in some places for years, it has never been a problem. But this was the first time these machines had been used and it seems that there was a computer glitch in 255 machines. Or the pollworkers screwed up, whichever. Needless to say the Democrats knee jerk response is to blame the Republicans.