I just voted in the WA primary and I noticed a couple of things

[oldtime dfl_er]

As you no doubt know, King County has gone to this "top two" system of voting. Most candidates have their party preference listed after their name on the ballot. In most cases, the Republicans have "Prefers Republican Party" listed after their name. But Dino Rossi (and one or two others, I can't recall who) has "Prefers G.O.P. Party" after his name. Am I being anal when I question this? Shouldn't it be standardized? What if some people out there wouldn't vote for a Republican, but might vote for someone who "prefers" GOP?

Second, as I was signing in, the woman asked me if I wanted to vote electronically rather than a paper ballot. She gestured to a man standing near me, and said something to the effect that "he needs something to do". I said "Is it a Diebold machine?" she said yes. The guy standing there said "What's wrong with that?" I said "Thank you, I prefer a paper ballot." The guy said "The Diebold machine is perfectly safe. There's a paper record." I politely declined for a second time. Felt just a little bullied.

After I left, I wondered...is that guy from Diebold? And if he is, what right does he have to be there pushing electronic voting with Diebold machines? How do I find out if he was from Diebold, and if he was, should I make a complaint? Again, I wonder if I'm being anal or paranoid, but I just don't think that the representative of a partisan, for-profit company should be standing there questioning my choice of a paper ballot over an electronic one.

(edit -- I'm going to cross-post this to the GD forum for a larger response)

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. It was the whole state, not just King County

Only King County still had polling places, as the rest of the state has gone to all mail-in voting (meaning the state has abrogated all responsibility for ballot security. King County will follow suit starting next year.)

The poll workers also tried to bully me into using the electronic voting machine. I just sneered and said, "I'll take the verifiable paper trail." Before he would give me a ballot, though, I had to prove that I could actually read it. :eyes: Personally, I think they were from Diebold. I have been voting at my place for more than a decade, and I know the poll workers quite well. This was someone new, a young guy in his late 20s.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. And as expected, the day AFTER the election....

States throw out costly electronic voting machines

The demise of touch-screen voting has produced a graveyard of expensive corpses: Warehouses stacked with thousands of carefully wrapped voting machines that have been shelved because of doubts about vanishing votes and vulnerability to hackers.

What to do with this high-tech junkyard is a multimillion-dollar question. One manufacturer offered $1 apiece to take back its ATM-like machines. Some states are offering the devices for sale on eBay and craigslist. Others hope to sell their inventories to Third World countries or salvage them for scrap.

A few more are holding out hope that the machines, some of which were purchased for as much as $5,000, could one day be resurrected.

"We store them very, very carefully in the hopes that someone, someday may decide that we can use them again," said San Diego County Registrar Deborah Seiler, whose jurisdiction spent $25 million on the devices.

The article continues at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008125805_votejunk20.html

[satya]

3. Not that these people would let something like the law get in their way...

but doesn't having to prove you can read constitute a literacy test? In violation of the voting rights act? This is not good.

Edited to add: this also brings to mind something I read here on DU not too long ago (sorry, don't have the link) about HAVA money being used to hire pollworkers, and recruiting them from colleges and nonprofits. My thought then was that they were probably recruiting from places like Bob Jones U. and the fundie churches.

[eridani]

4. No, the elections department is trying to push electronic voting

Our script calls for pollworkers to ask whether the voter prefers paper or electronic ballots. What I saw was a potential disaster in the making. It takes some people a loooong time to vote. My husband pored over his choices for 14 minutes. With ELEVEN fucking poll voters out of 161 that were in my book, I amused myself by timing people at the Accuvote and in the visible privacy stalls. Three minutes is the minimum. If they had 10 Accuvotes per polling place (usually 10 precincts in each), they would never be able to allow everyone to vote.

In addition to hackability, these stupid machines are very expensive disenfranchisement devices. If my hubby had voted on one of them during lunch hour or right after work in a general election, he would have disenfranchised a dozen people who had to get back to work, minimum.

[romulusnr]

5. rossi's new party

I could post all the news stories and blogs I used but rather than that I'll just point you to the section I added to wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_gubernatorial_election,_2008#Controversy_over_Rossi_party_preference

this was a big stink for a while on the local pol blogs and weeklies.

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. The Wikipedia article has been corrected

It incorrectly listed him as a Republican, despite the fact that he registered with a party preference of G.O.P. and that it was under this preference that he was listed in the voters' guides and on the ballot.