From Dayton Daily News… [emphasis added]
The machines, which officials said are more accurate and are expected to speed up the vote-counting process, are being used in about half of Ohio’s 88 counties, including Greene and Miami.
…
Mike Petkus, 47, of Dayton said that when he went to cast his ballot at Kiser Middle School in north Dayton, he had the Northridge school board candidates on his touch screen rather than the Dayton school board.
He thought, ‘I don’t have time to play games but this isn’t right,’ ” he said. As he was leaving the polling place to get to work, he said, “another guy was raising that same red flag.” “I think there was some very poor checking,” he said. Montgomery County Board of Elections Director Steve Harsman acknowledged there were some expected and unexpected problems, though he was pleased overall with the way things were running.
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His office received 30 to 40 calls from precincts reporting a “low paper error” on some of the machines even though each contained a new roll of paper.
Harsman believes the machines got jostled while moved to the polling locations, shaking a bracket and causing a sensor to go off.
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At one Washington Twp. precinct, two of the eight voting machines were reportedly taken out of service in the morning because of snafus.
In Miamisburg, a voter who went to cast his ballot at a precinct in the Miamisburg library at 7 a.m. said he wasn’t able to vote because the new machines were displaying ballots for a Warren County precinct.
He said poll operators told him they had to cancel all the ballots of people who had tried to vote there earlier because they all said the wrong ballots were displayed.
Fraudwell’s been busy since the last escapade!!! 😯
With the court case pending, I hope someone got these bastards on Video tape. Use a camcorder to record their fascist mongering ways, so it can be used for criminal indictment later when its revealed how "Fraudwell" likes his elections
Doug E.
Simply amazing that the machines ask you to vote for people who aren’t candidates (where you are voting).. Does that fall under "candiate fraud"?
This country is going to hell faster than the crooks can rake in the cash.. this is gonna get messy..
These complaints are all coming from liberal conspiracy buffs. I talked to Bernadette Noe this afternoon, and she assured me we had a very good election today.
I voted in Montgomery County today around 4:30. Obviously I hate electronic voting machines as just about anyone here and would much rather use a paper and pen, but I was happy to see the ones were were using had a paper trail. You could celarly see who you voted for, printed on paper, after you selected to cast your ballot.
Re: Comment #4
A piece of paper that says who you voted for is virtually meaningless…if there is any contention or suspicion of illegality (what am I saying "if"???) what good does that piece of paper do you? Is everyone who voted going to return to their polling sites and say "here it is, count it again"? All that piece of paper serves to do is to momentarily assuage any suspicion of fraud. Unless there is assurance that the machines are actually tabulating the votes correctly, electronic voting machines remain extremely dangerous to our (supposed) system of free elections.
Remember – those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything. (Josef Stalin, but I’m sure everyone knows.)
P.S. Bob Fitrakis rocks. Read his book.
…and, if the paper just prints what the machines say, it’s not independent. Did anyone ever think of that? I think the only way to prevent vote fraud is to have 2 parallel independent voting systems. And they both must match at the end of the election, or you re-vote. Paper printing off what the machines say is not independent. It’s redundant! It’s like the recount they had in Ohio, where they just fixed the machines to match the count. It was not independent.
20 Amazing U.S. Voting Facts
"Democrats cleaned up big in off-year elections from New Jersey to California, sinking the candidate who embraced President Bush in the final days of the Virginia governor’s campaign. They also turned back all four of GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s efforts to reshape state government. " (link here).
I voted late in the evening about 6:30 or so in Greene County, Ohio. No waiting, no problems using the machines. I didn’t like the lack of privacy, however. They are just out in the open for anyone to see where you’re putting the X’s.
The printed paper recaps do not do any good to reassure me, because they remain rolled up and put in a closet unless there is an issue raised. If nobody knows what the results "should" have been, then no issue would be raised, right? They just report what the machine says it should report, end of story. I worry more about votes changed as a cumulative total number, than individual votes changed as you’re voting.
Was interesting for my local paper to have a mini-blog for election comments. I thought that was a great idea. I love that the common person can be heard these days and we don’t have to rely on the corporate news whores any longer! Truth, justice and the American way, may be on the rebound via the internet. I can hope at least :o)
The citizens of Ohio voted down the election reform proposals that might have ended all this crapola.
This can’t mean they like having a reputation like Florida’s for corruption. So it must mean that they don’t like "outsiders" like MoveOn.org dictating to them. They prefer being dictated to by fundamentalist pastors and a Secretary of State who talks about having "Christian parents" who taught him what was right.
If I lived in Ohio and were traveling out of state, I’d cover up the license plate on my car. Pretty embarrassing.
How badly did those election reform initiatives get beaten? Any evidence of fraud to keep them from passing?
Heh… yeah.. that makes sense.. use BAD voting machines and practices to vote on if you should FIX it.. too funny..
Oh, and since those "printed votes" from your machines aren’t part of the "official record", they become kind of moot.. not to mention, all those votes on a roll of paper ? like a cash register receit roll? Do you have any idea how easy it is to walk off with one in your pocket? 1000s of votes, tossed in a pocket and burned in the fireplace at home.. Yeah.. that’s encouraging..
RLM #10 – You hit a nerve. Shallow comment about the license plates and the shame we must all be feeling. Do you even know what the issues were that were put before us? They were NOT anything that would have helped us with the issues of trust or accountability. Just more layers of crapola and more chances for rich cronies to rule. Please back your comments with some facts. While there were a couple of okay points, (as normal in politics) the loopholes, added layers of more appointed/not accountable/not elected government, and added costs seemed to far outweigh the benefits to anything proposed.
Please tell us stupid people in Ohio just why we should be ashamed to drive out of state and how those issues would have saved our day. I sure didn’t see it. We didn’t choose to be controlled by our dishonest rulers. Bush isn’t the only dishonest elected official in office wrongly, due to the voting practices of 2000 and 2004.