Get Your Blog Up

“This administration is populated by people who’ve spent their careers bashing government. They’re not just small-government conservatives—they’re Grover Norquist, strangle-it-in-the-bathtub conservatives. It’s a cognitive disconnect for them to be able to do something well in an arena that they have so derided and reviled all these years.”

Senator Hillary Clinton

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Voting problems abound

First news from Washington, where it seems some voting machines decided to stop working for no reason in the middle of a primary in Snohomish County.
Twenty touch-screen voting machines broke down on Sept. 14 in Snohomish County, but officials said Tuesday that no votes were lost and no voter was prevented from casting a ballot.

County elections manager Carolyn Diepenbrock said mechanical failures rendered the machines inoperable for the primary election. Some simply froze, while the viewing screens on others went blank.

"We're still trying to figure out what triggered the mechanical failures," she said. "We don't have that answer yet."

Luckily, no votes were lost this time. But what if there were missing votes? Without a paper trail, there is no way to account for those lost votes, and people become disenfranchised. With a close election forecast, it would be a shame if an event like this was the reason the Presidency was won or lost.

Which quite logically leads me to Florida, where Secretary of State Glenda Hood announced that the court mandated ability to conduct manual recounts may not be possible in 16 counties in the Sunshine State:
A spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has suggested that Sarasota County and 15 others simply may not be able to conduct manual recounts of contested Nov. 2 general election races with their paperless touch-screen voting machines.

"No vendor currently has the capability to develop a piece of equipment, or companion equipment, that can produce a receipt," Jenny Nash told the Pelican Press earlier this week. "When they do, it will be submitted for certification."

On Sept. 26, Hood let a deadline pass when she failed to appeal Administrative Law Judge Susan Kirkland's ruling that Sarasota County and the 15 others must be capable of conducting manual recounts with their paperless touch-screen equipment.

No word on which counties are affected other than Sarasota.

Finally, Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer has discovered a new way to disenfranchise a Democratic leaning group, the American Indian. I actually sent this article to my friend Adam right before I left for work this morning, and he passed it along to Jesus' General. I recommend both of their posts which leaves further comment on my part a bit unnecessary. So go read them now that you have finished here.