Virginia's ballots chops off Webb's last name

[Jeanette in FL]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061024/ap_on_re_us/virginia_senate_glitch

Virginia ballot glitch chops names

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - U.S. Senate candidate James H. "Jim" Webb has lost his last name on electronic ballots in three Virginia cities where election computers can't cope with long names.

The glitch in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville also affects other candidates with long names, officials said.

Webb, a Democrat, appears with his full name on the ballot page where voters make their choices. The error — referring to him only as James H. "Jim" — shows up on a summary page, where voters are supposed to review their selections.

Election officials emphasized that the problem shouldn't cause votes to be cast incorrectly, though it might cause some confusion.



Here we go folks.

[Parche]

1. VA

And Virginia is one of the most crucial states this year for the election, Senate
if we can get that seat, then we have control in the Senate

[Hav]

2. .

Did they use Allen's full name as well? Because that would be almost as long I would say.


edit: I misread something.
Anyway, I would call that bad programming. Do they only hire idiots?

[IntravenousDemilo]

6. Especially if they include his middle name, "Macaca". n/m

[leftchick]

3. then all of those cities need paper ballots

period!

[Jeanette in FL]

4. That is how I see it

There is no other way they can do it properly.

[IntravenousDemilo]

5. Oh, come on, they've had two years. There should be no "glitches".

What kind of clusterfuck is running your elections? What you need is an independent, non-partisan agency that oversees all your national and state elections, rules on the accuracy of all political advertising, prints only uniformly designed paper ballots which you will mark with an X, and hires non-partisan employees to staff the polls, count the ballots, and report the results to district offices for tabulation -- an "Elections US" if you will.

[formercia]

7. They put in his middle name so it would overrun

Who the hell needs a middle name on the ballot?

[fooj]

8. George Allen doesn't have (R) after his name, either.

How long are Americans going to put up with this shit?

[lectrobyte]

9. I know there's an old proverb about never attribute to malice what

stupidity can explain, but...

James H. "Jim" Webb

seems to be less than 20 characters, hardly a long name...

Dwight D. Eisenhower

is longer.

20 characters? I'd have thought "too long" would be more like 40 or 50.

[Der Blaue Engel]

10. Let me get this straight

James H. "Jim" Webb is a LONG NAME? Do they think we're stupid???

14 characters. They allowed 14 fucking characters. What the hell was that, an attempt to keep them furriners from runnin'?

Well it's a good thing for them Kay Bailey Hutchison isn't running there (20 characters), or George V. Voinovich (19), or God forbid, George Herbert Walker Bush (a ghastly 26 characters)!

The guy's name is Jim Webb and they manage to turn that into a "long name." I'm so sick of this crap.

Edited to add: this is for electronic ballots and they can't fix the name field within two weeks? Bullshit.

[stephinrome]

13. I'm guessing it's not the number of characters but

the fact it is 4 chunks. They probably have fields for first, middle initial and last name. He's got first, MI, nickname and last name. Surely someone can figure this out. Geez people. Just put in the second field.

O mamma mia!

[underpants]

14. Gee anyone want to guess how those areas tend to vote???

Well I am not sure about Alexandria or even Falls Church but Charlottesville votes HEAVILY Democrat.... anything to scratch a few votes away I guess.

[EC]

11. Did Jim request it be listed that way

or did someone purposefully list it that way, including quotation marks to add characters, therefore resulting in overage in space? That adds up to 19 spaces, whereas Jim Webb is only 8 and James H. Webb would have been 13...my guess is this was done on purpose...(aren't the ballot designers given the info as to amount of spaces for names?)

[Hubert Flottz]

12. Sounds like a story for KO...