Posted on 10/22/2004 4:33:01 PM PDT by Smogger
Travis County election officials have responded to complaints that voters casting straight-party Democratic ballots are discovering, when performing a final check of their ballots, that their votes for president have been changed from Kerry/Edwards to Bush/Cheney. The officials say that, after trying and failing to replicate the problem on its eSlate voting machines, they have concluded the vote changes are due to voter error rather than mechanical failure. Gail Fisher, manager of the county's Elections Division, theorizes that after selecting their straight party vote, some voters are going to the next page on the electronic ballot and pressing "enter," perhaps thinking they are pressing "cast ballot" or "next page." Since the Bush/Cheney ticket is the first thing on the page, it is highlighted when the page comes up – and thus, pressing "enter" at that moment causes the Kerry/Edwards vote to be changed to Bush/Cheney.
Fisher stressed very strongly that voters should not rush, but carefully and thoroughly examine their ballots on the final review page before pressing "cast ballot."
Fisher said the county has received "less than a dozen" complaints from the more than 70,000 voters that had cast ballots by Friday afternoon. She said the county has also received a complaint from the Travis County Democratic Party. TCDP Executive Director
Elizabeth Yevich said it was not a formal complaint, but that the party had expressed concern and the county had been "receptive and responsive."
Yevich also said that an e-mail alerting voters to the problem, originally sent out from her office, "has taken on a life of its own."
"The body of the e-mail is staying the same, but the headline is being changed or its saying 'this came from brother' or something like that," Yevich said.
I cast my vote in Travis County today, and had no problems with it. It's pretty cut and dried, really.
The electronic voting machines are no good. With the cards, if you had them lined up properly, you could easily punch your choice. With the new machines, if you punch hard enough to make a good hole, the whole thing shatters like it is made of glass, and you have to start over. I'll bet they run through thousands of them in southeast Florida.
I voted today in another Texas county. Everything went smoothly except that the machine that generates a code number for each voter to enter went on the blink, and there was a cbig crowd waiting to vote. I was impressed with the voting machine and the way it operated.
Sounds like a problem for people unfamiliar with the machines to me. I know retired people who refuse to use ATM's, Debit cards or even cell phones because they don't understand how to do it.
Give them all written directions, and a voting machine that will register a vote using the correct procedure, and an electric shock for an incorrect procedure. I bet they get smart fast!
Lol...have to windex the screens after voting to get all the magic marker circles off of it...LOL
Horror my @ss. What we will reap on November 2 is a direct result of 50 years of Beavis and Butthead Public Schools.
Well, this certainly should be blowen way the h$ll our of proportion. </scarcasm off>
My God!! How stupid are these people? I guess the fact that they all appear to be Dems answers my question.
I wonder how they operate ATMs or Coke machines?
Give them a box of crayons and let them spell the name of who they want, if they can spell, of course.......
That's part of it too of course.
We could learn a lot from Afghanistan...put an X by the picture...stick your finger in the ink...GO HOME...wait for President Bush to be announced the winner by a LANDSLIDE!!!
If people are too stupid to read the directions they ought not to be voting at all!
And I guarantee you most of these are sKerry supporters. Up here in Republican Williamson County they said we had 16,000 early voters this week. Of course we have a smaller population but we must still get the vote out.
We are a nation of idiot. You can't have democracy with idiots. There will be riots in the streets, mark my words.
"....concluded the vote changes are due to voter error...."
How about demonrat voter scams!
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