Problems Reported With New Voting Machines.

[elleng]

Some polling places in Brooklyn did not open for more than 90 minutes — and there was one report of a three-and-a-half hour delay — as election workers tried to get the new equipment to function. Senator Charles E. Schumer was held up when he arrived at Public School 321 in Park Slope just before the scheduled 6 a.m. opening; he and other voters had to wait 15 to 20 minutes before the machines were ready to take their ballots.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg delivered a strongly worded denunciation of the city’s Board of Elections.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/problems-reported-with-new-voting-machines/?hp

[Rhiannon12866]

1. I didn't have any problem, but I sure wasn't comfortable with it, either...

I asked the guy who took my ballot if this was going to turn out like Florida and he said, perfectly serious, that these ballots don't have any holes... *sigh*

[TreasonousBastard]

2. We started with the new machines here in Suffolk County and...

the problems all seemed to be training hassles-- some districts nobody knew how to set them up. I think that was the big problem in NYC.

The machines, AFIK, worked just fine. The poll workers didn't, though.

(Working the polls here, I can attest to some flaky training-- but we all managed to slog through it and get proper results.)

[Wilms]

3. What do you mean by "proper results"?

It's not as if there's any way you can know how the machine is counting or miscounting). Numerous studies have pointed this out. So without a risk-based audit, there's no way to know if the results are proper or not.

[yellerpup]

4. The machine we used in our precinct (W'chester)

worked well until it came time to collect the totals at the end of a brutally long day (16 hrs.+ and no official lunch break, not even 30 minutes...). When the lead inspector pushed the button for a vote tally, the machine powered down instead of printing out the totals. Luckily, the Board of Elections had paper ballots to count! Same thing happened in the town one over.

[Bill Bored]

5. Are you saying someONE actually COUNTED the paper ballots? nt

[yellerpup]

6. The paper ballots go back to the Board of Elections

and are counted there. The voting machines are locked and sealed when they are delivered (numbers on the seals are recorded both at the beginning of the day and at the end). Every machine has a team of one Dem and one Pug and the vote counting is handled the same way. For every Republican poll worker there is a Democratic poll worker to keep them honest.

Edited to clarify: No ONE person is every left alone with the ballots. It's handled in a similar fashion to 'chain of custody'.