Monday, March 08, 2004

Mishaps run deeper than new machines


And while we're at it:

Mishaps run deeper than new machines

While elections officials continue to size up everything that went wrong with San Diego County's first stab at electronic balloting, the problems ran much deeper than a simple technological glitch, voters and poll workers say. After the polls closed Tuesday, signatures on voter rolls in at least one precinct did not match the number of ballots recorded by machines. In other polling places, people were wrongly given provisional ballots*.


In my precinct, ours didn't match. Watch this space for tonight's insider report and glitch-by-glitch timeline!

* This is not unusual. The Voter Roster has voters names in about 4 different places, and it's not at all unheard of to miss a name in the "new voter" section or the "hasn't voted in forever" section. The correct procedure if you don't find a voter and they demonstrate they live in the precinct (that's not even a requirement anymore) is to issue them a provisional ballot.

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