This is just a quick note, as my baby is crying in the other room. I wanted to get
out publicly - somewhere - that both of the electronic voting booths in my district
in San Benito County (R.O. Hardin School in Hollister) acted irregularly for not 
presenting the option to vote 'No' on Proposition 1A. 

The precinct officer canceled out my vote (I think, because he just unselected all
my entered votes and I believe he followed through with the vote. He assured me 
that my vote wouldn't be counted twice, however). They had me vote on paper using
a ballpoint pen instead. I was only one of two voters there, so I wasn't able to
observe whether they offered the electronic voting machine or insisted on paper
ballots from that point forward.

A technician was called in, who verified the problem, but as far as I know at least
one of the two machines was left online, as they wanted to see if it happened again
to the next person. This, after getting verbal confirmation from the voter using 
that machine that the option to vote "no" was absent there, too.

I took a really poor picture of my voting booth with my cellphone, before I was told
that cameras are not allowed. I post it here if it is of any use in future 
investigations.



The area right above the yellow "Back" and "Review" buttons is where there is only 
one choice displayed for prop 1A. Even though you can't read it, it provides only
the option to vote "Yes" and you can tell even from this photo that there is only
a single choice. The choice did not wrap around to the next column, and unfortunately 
the reflection of the ceiling lighting obscures that area, but the whole right 
column was for Prop 1B, and even around the glare you can see there are two options
to vote for that proposition: "Yes" and "No".

This concerns me. One, it could have just been a programming problem, and the reviewers
didn't catch it. That is the most optimistic thing that could have happened, but
even that is really horrible and whoever signed off on the ballot being full and 
complete should be investigated and fired. But what if it is an attempt to 
invalidate all ballots and force a re-vote, or something along those lines? 

Questions on my mind:

+ Mine was the Democratic ballot. What did ballots for Republican or independent
  look like?

+ Why didn't the discovery lead to an immediate shut-down of at least the two
  voting machines in my district?

+ Did an immediate review of all county voting machines take place? If so, by
  whom and what were the results?

+ How is an abstain vote for Proposition 1A to be counted? Is it "No" or "Abstain"?

+ Why shouldn't I be able to take photographs of my ballot as I'm casting my vote?

+ Who is accountable for problems such as these?

+ Does anybody care?

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link