Trouble With Machines in Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Illinois
And we're just getting started...More here soon...
By Brad Friedman on 11/7/2006, 11:23am PT  

We're gonna have trouble keeping up today. So 'be the media' in comments here where you can. But here we go...

We're getting reports of trouble and machine breakdowns from all over the country. Places where Emergency Paper Ballots are not available (despite our many pleas for weeks) and voters are being turned away or told to come back later...From USA Today...

•In Indiana's Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper because poll workers didn't know how to run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler.

• Election officials in Delaware County, Ind., planned to seek a court order to extend voting after an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts. Delaware County Clerk Karen Wenger said the cards that activate the machines were programmed incorrectly. "We are working with precincts one-by-one over the telephone to get the problem fixed," Wenger said.

• Illinois officials were swamped with calls from voters complaining that poll workers did not know how to operate new electronic equipment

• In Ohio, some machines wouldn't function."We got five machines — one of them's got to work," said Willette Scullank, a troubleshooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.

• In Florida, voting was briefly delayed at four districts because of either mixed up ballots or electronic activators being unintentionally wiped out, according to Mary Cooney, spokeswoman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections. Voters were forced to use paper ballots after an electronic machine broke in the Jacksonville suburb of Orange Park.

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