Guest Blogged by John Gideon
If you recall The BRAD BLOG has reported on the Summit County memory card failures in the recent past; most recently on April 4. Summit County’s memory card (PCMCIA) failures have not gotten any better according to an article in this morning’s Akron Beacon Journal…
Summit County Board of Elections Director Bryan Williams is predicting Election Day failures with the memory cards in the county’s new optical scan voting system.
“I don’t think we can assume anything else,” Williams said at a meeting Tuesday, where the elections board reviewed the latest list of troubles.
This seems to be a complete melt-down of everything provided to the county by ES&S. The Beacon-Journal goes on to report the problems…
On Monday, 11 cards that were working properly on Saturday experienced errors or other problems as elections staff have continued practice runs with test ballots, Williams said.
“One card is physically coming apart at the seams,” Williams said. “We’re seeing at every point of use, a little drop off.”
Williams said that based on what he has seen so far, he can only expect that some of the 475 memory cards programmed for each county voting precinct will not work on Election Day.
The main ballot tabulator, called the election reporting manager or ERM — which is supposed to read the memory cards and report totals — also isn’t working correctly. At one point in practice runs, the tabulator was dropping off dozens of races for Republican candidates for precinct committee members.
And, the machines the county purchased to accommodate disabled voters still aren’t working right, even though by law they should have been available for absentee voting that has been ongoing since the end of March.
When a blind man came to the elections board to vote absentee last week, he had to vote instead with the assistance of a bipartisan pair of board employees.
But the county does point to the one good part of this saga and that is the fact that because the tabulators are optical-scan there are paper ballots that can be hand counted when the problems crop-up.
And what about those machines for the voters with disabilities?
When elections staff listened to the ballot styles that were programmed into the machine — there are more than 1,200 this year — they noticed that many of the candidate names were mispronounced. Other problems include the machine reading the punctuation off the ballot, not reading all of the ballot or not offering the voter the correct choices.
The Help America Vote Act requires that all counties have machines to accommodate disabled voters. Technically, the county violated HAVA when it was not able to use the machine for the blind voter last week.
Does anyone believe that all bad memory cards only went to Summit County, Ohio as if the county was a magnet for bad memory cards? Does anyone believe that the poor programming of the AutoMark voting machines is only an isolated incident?
The ES&S train is chugging down that track and they will leave chaos behind them as they gather up as much money as they can lay their hands on.
The Board of Elections in Lake County Ohio is no longer responding to my emails about the ES&S voting machines they will use in the primary. They probably got tired of my sending them articles from the BradBlog. On the other hand I was also sending the articles to the contact person at what passes for the Democratic party in Lake County with no response. I don’t know if all of the memory cards are working or not or if they are even testing them. Lake county is only about 50 miles form Summit County but is majority Republican. So if all of Lake’s cards are working and most of Summit’s are not it would be more than strange. Summit County supported John Kerry in 2004, Lake County did not.
In Solano county California they started using optical scan systems.
Last Novembers election had some scare that concerned the county supervisers about the possability of needing to replace the systems. The local newspaper just reported that they were relieved they did not need to….but NOTHING about the actual problem that was making them think that in the first place.
Or if our vote was intact.
I hear the train a comin’;
it’s rollin’ ’round the bend,
We ain’t had fair elections
since I don’t know when.
I’m stuck at Folsom Prison
My name is Bruce McPherson
But that train keeps rollin’
on across the land.
Sorry Johnny, I couldn’t help myself!
I guess thats what happens when you store the foundation of democracy on a $160 four megabyte memory card powered by a battery.
OHdog That’s a very interesting point. It sure would be interesting to find out if the bad memory cards are showing up only in certain areas.
Anyone have ideas on how one could find out?
Polls are showing that the people favor democrats taking over majority party status in congress in November. It is by average about 47% to 33% and growing (link here).
However, the way congressional districts are drawn (link to your district map here) raises the very serious spectre that gerrymandering may thwart the will of the people.
The way districts are drawn can change everything (link here).
On Hardball With Chris Matthews(MSNBC) yesterday (4/18/06), a reporter stated that on a district by district basis, polls show that republicans would hold the majority.
In other words, the design of the districts is such that it thwarts and is contrary to the will of the people at large.
The map link above shows how true this is. Look at the 25th and 28th districts of Texas, Tom DeLay constructs, to see what I mean.
We have a dictatorial situation anytime the will of the people is thwarted by its government. There is no other name for it.
Some dictatorships are less vile than others, but calling a spade a spade is what I am talking about.
We have a dictatorship if the people cannot express their will by their vote. If the government allows us to vote but that vote is meaningless, the fact is that it is a dictatorship because the people cannot change the government.
The Texas gerrymandering case has been put on the fast track by the US Supreme Court (link here).
This is unusual under normal circumstances, but is all the more unusual since the cases have been stalled and have therefore been on the slow track in the US Supreme Court until now.
The case it now seems that will be reversed is Henderson v Perry (link here).
The issue of gerrymandering is equal to the problem with voting machines. Because even if we perfect the voting machines, the gerrymandering issue is just as much a threat.
Both evils … gerrymandering and fraudulent and junky electronic voting machines … are destroying American democracy.
And if the judicial goes down the tubes too (link here), and does not stop gerrymandering, I am sorry to say that democracy will be gone from American soil for a long time.
If one looks at Summit County data (link here), and the congressional districts in Ohio (link here), one notices that multiple congressional districts can inhabit one county.
Summit is one such county. This, it seems to me, complicates matters.
The faulty machines in Summit County will damage the election of more than one congressional district, even tho that election will take place in only one county.
What a tangled web we weave … that is why I say what I do in post #6.