Electronic Voting F@#$s Up Another Election

Posted on September 12, 2006

Boy, residents of Montgomery County, MD sure must be glad their tax dollars were spent on fancy new e-voting machines!

From today’s Washington Post — Montgomery to Extend Voting Hours After Election Glitches:

Polling stations in Montgomery County will remain open until 9 tonight–an hour later than usual–to accommodate voters who were turned away from the polls this morning because of a glitch that left computerized voting machines across the county inoperable…

Boxes of automated voting cards that are required to work the electronic machines were mistakenly left behind in a Rockville warehouse in the run-up to Election Day, elections officials said.

Early morning voters were forced to cast provisional, hand-written ballots at Montgomery County’s 238 polling places, while election staffers scrambled to deliver the forgotten voting cards as quickly as possible. Several precincts ran out of the paper ballots, and workers from at least one precinct went to a copy shop to make more. Some poll workers, according to witnesses, did not know the provisional ballots were an option and told voters to try again later in the day.

Jeez Louise. What a mess. But at least they’re all whizzy and electronic, right?

If this sort of thing ticks you off, you can do something about it — Verified Voting is looking for volunteers to monitor the performance of e-voting systems in November’s general election.  Write to observer@verifiedvoting.org if you’re interested.