My attempt to vote in Maryland Primary this morning.

[yellowcanine]

All going well on the DIEBOLD touch screen machine. Get to the summary page. Page comes up and just as quickly the screen clicks and goes dark. I call an election judge over. The voting card is stuck in the machine and can't be removed - so I can't move to another machine. I explain that I never actually cast my vote. This is confirmed by checking the main computer - says I was issued a voting card but no vote recorded. Because I was issued a voting card and it is stuck in the machine I have to vote by provisional ballot. GRRR.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Voting machines are tools to disenfranchise voters..

Many scanners in NYC broken..or only 2 scanners in school with 20 districts...wait to scan:over 45 minutes. ergo - people leave without having their ballot scanned.

[ensho]

2. kick

nt

[yellowcanine]

3. Paper ballots with scanners is the way to go. I don't know why there is so much resistance to this.

The voter could mark the ballot and insert it into the scanner. The ballots could be collected in in a bin behind the scanner, providing a paper trail in the event of the need for a recount.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Did you read my post?

BROKEN SCANNERS
INADEQUATE NUMBER OF SCANNERS IN POLLING PLACES . WAITS OF 45 MINUTES TO SCAN YOUR BALLOT...FOR PRIMARIES!!!
BALLOTS PRINTED SO SMALL THAT THEY ARE SUPPLYING MAGNIFYING GLASSES AT POLLING PLACES!! THAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING HERE IN NYC..really!!!


http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/politics&id=7664858

NEW YORK -- Even the most jaded New Yorkers might consider this a recipe for chaos: New electronic voting machines are being introduced in the Sept. 14 primary. State and city budget cuts mean not enough staff has been trained to help voters use them. A glitch in the computer programming will let people mistakenly vote for too many candidates.


And the machines come with paper ballots so hard to read, voters will be offered magnifying glasses.

<snip>

[yellowcanine]

6. Scanners still better than touch screens. They are cheaper too. That said, nothing

is fool proof. You still have to have enough scanners to handle the crowds. And how hard is it to make ballots that can be read by most people - not hard.

The point is, with a paper ballot at least there is a record of voter intent. And the ballots can always be tallied by hand if the scanners fail. With a touch screen, no.

[BrklynLiberal]

8. I just came home from voting..and found out that we do not get receipts or get any on-screen

verification of our vote...

The votes could very well have been misread...accidentally or on purpose..or not read at all..and there is no backup for a recount if needed.

[Bill Bored]

9. BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW IF THERE IS A NEED FOR A RECOUNT?

If you are referring to resistance in DRE states, that's coming from the dark side for sure. But here in New York, where we're replacing lever voting machines with scanners, the question that almost no politicians or election officials are willing to answer intelligently is HOW DO YOU KNOW IF THERE IS A NEED FOR A RECOUNT? If they could answer it, we would not be counting votes with computers in the first place, including scanners.

The process to determine if a full hand count is needed is too onerous and complex for officials to deal with. Some of them know it, but they won't admit it. Others don't even want to think about it. They just trust the machines and say what you've said: we can do a recount if we need to.

A few are dealing with this by hand-counting everything, or by going to court over it. Those are the true heroes. The rest of them are full of crap.

I hope this answers your question about why there is resistance.

[fasttense]

4. And then.....

your vote is sent over the Internet tubes to Chattanooga Tenn. so that Senator Corker can get his buddies to "fix" the numbers.

And then....

When someone of a mildly honest nature realizes the numbers are rigged he dies in a mysterious plane accident that he warned about 2 weeks earlier.

And then....

Someone casts their ballot in Florida....

[flyarm]

11. we in Fla got the Sequoia touch machines before the 2008 primary abolished ..it was the reason

repigs legislators changed our primary date..and we in Fla became the first state in the nation to outlaw the touch screen voting machines..and what did we get for that??????? We had our delegates taken away ..because the repigs added onto the Touch Screen abolishing Legislation a date change on our primary!

So we dems that fought so hard to abolish those damn machines had our primary votes negated by the democratic party!

wasn't that just ducky doodles??

Many of us who worked so hard on that legislation..will never forgive or forget!

[demodonkey]

7. What happened to you is NOT a provisional ballot situation under the Help America Vote Act.

It was HAVA that gave us those machines for federal elections.

This was a federal primary election so I would file a formal HAVA complaint if I were you on the grounds that you were improperly issued a provisional ballot and that the voting equipment failed to operate as HAVA dictates and denied you a private and independent opportunity to vote.

Go ahead file one and piss off Linda Lamone.

;-)

[Bill Bored]

10. Good point. It was an "emergency ballot" situation.

And there was a lawsuit in PA over this which the voters won, right?

[demodonkey]

12. Not exactly the same issue. The PA federal lawsuit was over what percentage of machines....

...had to be down before emergency paper ballots could be issued.

PA Dept of State wanted it to be 100%, citizens wanted it to be 50%. Citizens won, so the PA requirement is emergency paper ballots when 50% or more of the machines in a precinct are down.

(I testified in the trial which was in Federal Court in Philadelphia, BTW.)

This case would be hard to fit in under the PA requirement however, because one individual machine had apparently malfunctioned and swallowed his already-programmed smart card and wouldn't relinquish it so he could vote on another machine. I don't know what their rule is in MD, but if I was the Judge of Elections in this precinct I would have issued an Emergency Paper Ballot; Linda Lamone be damned.

No matter what, this was NOT a provisional ballot situation. I hope the OP really does go ahead and files a formal HAVA complaint.