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    02-06-08 AlterNet-Super Tuesday's Voting Glitches by Steven

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    Mark Welkie
    Glitches were reported across the country during Super Tuesday voting. In Georgia, new electronic voter check-in systems and voter ID requirements led to long lines and delays at many polling places. Some voters had to wait over an hour to cast ballots. In Los Angeles, some poll workers were unaware that independent voters could request Democratic ballots, potentially disenfranchising hundreds of thousands. Other issues included missing ballots in Illinois, names missing from voter rolls in New York, and delays when electronic voting machines malfunctioned in New Jersey. While no election is perfect, states like California and Ohio saw fewer problems after transitioning to paper ballots scanned by computers.

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    02-06-08 AlterNet-Super Tuesday's Voting Glitches by Steven

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    Mark Welkie
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    Glitches were reported across the country during Super Tuesday voting. In Georgia, new electronic voter check-in systems and voter ID requirements led to long lines and delays at many polling places. Some voters had to wait over an hour to cast ballots. In Los Angeles, some poll workers were unaware that independent voters could request Democratic ballots, potentially disenfranchising hundreds of thousands. Other issues included missing ballots in Illinois, names missing from voter rolls in New York, and delays when electronic voting machines malfunctioned in New Jersey. While no election is perfect, states like California and Ohio saw fewer problems after transitioning to paper ballots scanned by computers.

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    02-06-08 AlterNet-Super Tuesday’s Voting Glitches By Steven

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    Glitches were reported across the country during Super Tuesday voting. In Georgia, new electronic voter check-in systems and voter ID requirements led to long lines and delays at many polling places. Some voters had to wait over an hour to cast ballots. In Los Angeles, some poll workers were unaware that independent voters could request Democratic ballots, potentially disenfranchising hundreds of thousands. Other issues included missing ballots in Illinois, names missing from voter rolls in New York, and delays when electronic voting machines malfunctioned in New Jersey. While no election is perfect, states like California and Ohio saw fewer problems after transitioning to paper ballots scanned by computers.

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    40 views3 pages

    02-06-08 AlterNet-Super Tuesday's Voting Glitches by Steven

    Uploaded by

    Mark Welkie
    Glitches were reported across the country during Super Tuesday voting. In Georgia, new electronic voter check-in systems and voter ID requirements led to long lines and delays at many polling places. Some voters had to wait over an hour to cast ballots. In Los Angeles, some poll workers were unaware that independent voters could request Democratic ballots, potentially disenfranchising hundreds of thousands. Other issues included missing ballots in Illinois, names missing from voter rolls in New York, and delays when electronic voting machines malfunctioned in New Jersey. While no election is perfect, states like California and Ohio saw fewer problems after transitioning to paper ballots scanned by computers.

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    53410880.

    doc Page 1 of 3

    Posted on February 6, 2008

    Super Tuesday’s Voting Glitches


    By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

    Super Tuesday was not just a referendum on presidential candidates. It was a test of
    the nation's ever-evolving voting systems and there were glitches reported coast-to-
    coast, with the most serious possibly being in Georgia, where a new voter ID
    requirement and electronic check-in process delayed voting in dozens of locations
    and prompted some people to leave.
    "I think this is the most significant election administration story of the day," said
    David Becker, director of People for the American Way's Democracy campaign, which
    runs a nationwide voter hotline on election days. "We knew this would happen with
    voter ID. There were long lines, bottlenecks at the check-in table, voting machines
    not in use."
    The Atlanta Journal Constitution's website recorded hundreds of voter experiences.
    While many said the state's new electronic poll books, which list voters' names, and
    its photo ID requirement was not a problem, dozens of people said otherwise.
    One such comment said, "Long, long lines, with three women who did not appear to
    know how to work machines, working on the only three machines provided to the
    precinct, while hundreds of voters stood in line waiting to vote; waited for more than
    an hour to cast my vote, which took less than 30 seconds!"
    Another said, "The dozen or so voting booths sat empty most of the time while a long
    line of people waited 45 minutes or more just to pass through "station 2." In the past,
    paper printouts were used to look up voter records, and this was much much faster.
    The precinct workers said they won't get any additional computers for November, so
    it's doubtful I'll wait through what will surely be an even longer line in the general
    election. What a shame."
    Matt Corrothers, director of media relations for Georgia Secretary of State Karen
    Handel, said his state had a very positive experience voting on Super Tuesday,
    saying, "Waiting in line at a polling place is not indicative of a problem with the
    process."
    County election officials, not the secretary of state, provide the check-in terminals
    used, he said. In the near-future, Carrothers said Handel would meet with county
    officials to encourage early and absentee voting, and to buy more "check-in
    terminals." He rejected any claim that the state's new voter ID law was to blame.
    "Any lines that may have formed in a few precincts throughout Georgia was the
    function of excitement at a historic turnout," Carrothers said.
    Another locale with serious election administration problems possibly affecting large
    numbers of voters was Los Angeles, where some poll workers were not aware that
    voters who declined to state their party on voter registration forms could ask for
    Democratic or American Independent Party ballots. At 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday,
    California Secretary of State Debra Bowen sent out a release asking the news media
    to remind these voters of their voter rights. "The secretary of state's voter hotline has
    received several dozen calls from DTS (decline to state party preference) voters
    53410880.doc Page 2 of 3

    around the state reporting some county poll workers have not been fully aware of
    DTS voter rights," the release said.
    More worrisome to election integrity activists, however, was the ballot layout used in
    Los Angeles County. If independent voters cast a Democratic ballot, they had to fill in
    an additional circle on a paper ballot, above the presidential choice, for their vote to
    count. The Courage Campaign, a California-focused group that seeks to encourage
    progressive grass-roots leadership, has asked county election officials to count the
    Democratic primary ballots by precinct to ensure that all votes are counted.
    "I can tell you we have about 800,000 DTS voters in Los Angeles County," said Rick
    Jacobs, Courage Campaign founder and chair. "So potentially hundreds of thousands
    of votes are at stake ... This is a voter rights issues. If people don't think their vote
    counts, they won't continue to vote."
    Jacobs said it was possible that a careful count could shuffle a few of the Democratic
    delegates awarded based on results in congressional districts.
    In New Mexico, a potential election challenge might be brewing. In that state, where
    Clinton won by 210-vote margin with 98 percent of precincts reporting, apparently
    four ballot boxes representing the remaining 2 percent of the vote were taken home
    by Democratic Party officials overnight, according to Heath Haussamen, an
    Albuquerque Tribune political columnist and blogger. Other party officials took
    possession of the ballots on Wednesday.
    The open question is whether there was any vote count fraud. But because caucuses
    are private, party-regulated affairs -- as opposed to primaries which are run by states
    -- litigation prospects are limited. Still, the Obama campaign was reportedly sending
    lawyers to investigate.
    In other states, the problems fell into two categories: electronic voting machine
    snafus and poll worker errors.
    In Illinois, one of four states to hold a Green Party primary, at least a dozen precincts
    in the greater Chicago area did not know there was a Green Party primary, said
    Illinois party spokesman Patrick Kelly. "The ballots were there, sitting in the back, in
    boxes under the table, still in boxes," he said. "People couldn't get a ballot at their
    polling place."
    In New York City, there were reports that registered voters names were not on voter
    rolls in a perhaps a dozen precincts. In Phoenix, Ariz., there were long lines when
    election officials did not anticipate as high a turnout, according to local media
    reports. Voters were given provisional ballots, which have to be verified before being
    added to totals.
    Perhaps the nation's most high-profile electronic voting machine failure occurred in
    New Jersey, when Gov. John Corzine, a Democrat, was delayed from voting for 45
    minutes when a touch-screen electronic machine would not work. In that state, there
    also were isolated reports of voters selecting one candidate while the computer
    screen highlighted another choice.
    While no election is trouble-free, there were some success stories, most notably the
    transition in California -- with the exception of Los Angeles, which has its own voting
    system -- from paperless touch-screen systems to paper ballots that are scanned and
    counted by computers.
    California Secretary of State Debra Bowen was criticized for instituting the change
    last year, but apart from counting delays, there appeared to be no major problems.
    Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner also has told election officials in her state to
    53410880.doc Page 3 of 3

    switch to paper ballots that are counted by scanners. The Ohio primary will be held
    March 4.

    Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of What Happened


    in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, with Bob
    Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006)

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