http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-machines9mar09,1,6221417.story?coll=la-headlines-californiaPoll workers struggling with a new electronic voting system in last week's election gave thousands of Orange County voters the wrong ballots, according to a Times analysis of election records. In 21 precincts where the problem was most acute, there were more ballots cast than registered voters.
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At polling places where the problem was most apparent because of turnouts exceeding 100%, an estimated 1,500 voters cast the wrong ballots, according to the Times' analysis of official county election data. Tallies at an additional 55 polling places with turnouts more than double the county average of 37% suggest at least 5,500 voters had their ballots tabulated for the wrong precincts.
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After signing in, each voter received a ticket bearing his or her precinct number and party affiliation from a poll worker. The voter would take the ticket to a second worker, who was supposed to scroll through a computer screen and use the voter's precinct and political party to select an access code that would identify the appropriate ballot. Several workers who handled this stage of the process — including some who said they didn't know more than one precinct had been assigned to their polling place — gave voters codes for the wrong precincts, causing the wrong ballots to appear on their screens.
Some voters noticed the problem and were able to get workers to give them access codes for the proper ballots. But many voters did not. The result was that turnout figures in some precincts were pushed artificially — even impossibly — high, while turnout figures for neighboring precincts that voted at the same polling place were artificially low.
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