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Disenfranchisement of most voters in minority precincts of Mercer County, Pennsylvania 046290 11/02/04, 3:54 PM PST Machine problem Case Avenue School, Sharon, Mercer County, Pennsylvania After caller voted, a screen appeared that showed all of his selections. All of his candidates appeared except for his vote for a presidential candidate. Caller tried several times to go back and cast another vote for a presidential candidate but could not get his selection to register on the machine. After speaking with his wife and daughter, caller discovered that they ahd also had the same problem, 060 455 12/27/04 , 6:51 AM PST Machine problem Mercer County, Pennsylvania Reported via e-mail: I thought you should know about my experiences on Nov. 2. I was a field organizer for the Kerry/Edwards Campaign in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, and I witnessed severe problems with the voting system there. The following is a brief summary: 1. Thirteen precincts encountered complete or partial failures of electronic voting machines. Many of these machines were deemed "unrepairable" be technicians, and were out of service all day long. All of them were in Democratic-majority precincts. Many of them were in African-American precincts that have historically voted up to 90% in favor of democrats. 2. Of these precincts, many of them lacked paper-ballot backups, and those that had paper ballots were unprepared to handle them, often issuing improper or illegal instructions. 3. Countless numbers of people were told to go home once, then returned later in the day, hoping that the system would have been fixed, and were told to go home again. Some even went to vote three times and were told to go home each time. There is no way to accurately estimate how many people simply never got to vote, but it is at least in the hundreds, if not thousands. 4. Out of 51,800 voters who signed in to vote on the electronic machines, only 47,700 actual votes for president were registered. In one highly-democratic precinct, Farrell 1-2, 289 people signed in to vote, but only 48 of them actually succeeded in registering votes for president (45 for Kerry, 3 for Bush). This points to a reasonable estimate that nearly 4,000 votes in the county were not recorded. Again, it appears that most of this disenfranchisement occurred in democratic-majority precincts. Since Pennsylvania was won by Kerry/Edwards, it has been difficult to get the proper degree of attention focused on this problem. However, the fact that these events did not directly affect the outcome of the election should not distract anyone from the fact that what happened in Mercer County was a complete disaster and a total disgrace. From their comments in the local papers, it appears that Mercer County's election officials fail to understand the gravity of 4000 lost votes and the disastrous affect that can have on peoples' faith in democracy. Such accidents cannot be swept under the rug. Anything short of a complete investigation into this matter should be unacceptable, and will be seen as unacceptable by the residents of Mercer County. Any pressure you can bring to bear to see that a full investigation goes forward will be greatly appreciated. Please call or write back. I have a stack of signed complaints that our office collected on Election Day. I am willing to help in any way to expose all the facts regarding this important matter.
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