Posted on 11/07/2006 12:05:11 PM PST by excludethis
(New Jersey - WABC, November 7, 2006) - The US Attorney for New Jersey has dispatched investigators to run down complaints of voting machine problems which are preventing voters from casting ballots for GOP Senate hopeful Tom Kean, Jr.
The counsel for the NJ Republican State Committee, Mark Sheridan, says he has four sworn affidavits and has received more than two dozen calls alleging that some of New Jersey's electronic voting machines were either "pre-voted" for Democratic incumbant Bob Menendez, or were otherwise inoperable when voters sought to cast votes for Kean.
Sheridan says complaints had come in from five NJ counties, some of the polling places affected are in Passaic, Paterson, Scotch Plains and North Bergen, though Sheridan refused to be more specific, citing a fear of depressing voter turnout in the affected locations.
Sheridan called the complaints a "disturbing" trend and threatened court action if election officials were unable to correct the problem and prevent its recurrence.
Sheridan said he'd received complaints of problems at more than seven locations affecting multiple voters at multiple and identical locations.
One problem, says Sheridan, is that voters apparently don't realize that in order to deselect a vote for a candidate on the new machines, they need to touch the icon for that candidate, and then touch the screen again to select the icon of the candidate for which they want to cast a vote.
Even so, Sheridan says that does not explain how the Menendez icon was selected on the affected machines, even before the voters attempted to use the machines to cast their ballots.
Voters do need to affirmatively lock in their votes on the machines before they reset, and there is a possibility that some voters aren't doing that, which could account for the problem, at least in some cases. However, Sheridan points out that if that were the case here, all of the icons for which a voter had cast ballots would be lit and the problem seems to be that only the Menendez icon remains selected.
Sheridan says there is no provision which would allow a poll worker to void an erroneously cast vote.
The counties in which machine problems have been reported include Middlesex, Hudson, Camden, Passaic and Union Counties.
Sheridan says the machines mentioned in the complaints are all Sequoia voting machines.
All four voters who swore out affidavits allege they voted for Menendez when they intended to vote for Kean.
The problems were first reported starting at about 7 a.m.
Unfortunately, the only way a republican state-wide candidate can win in Jersey is to win by a landslide. Anything closer and the dems just call on their most solid voting bloc: the post-living.
Silly! It doesn't matter who you vote for. The DIEBOLD machine always votes for the Republican! The blinking lights and pretty pictures are just entertainment for the masses.
Don't you read KOS? I thought everybody knew this stuff!
I think they prefer to call them 'post-living registrants'.
With the electronic voting booths this would be easy.
The person at the polls demonstrated how to vote with this new voting booth this morning. So she showed me by selecting the GOP. I was like, "you read my mind"...
You're gonna get in trouble for saying that! ;^)
The ballots we used to use in Georgia were, IMO, ideal.
A broken arrow pointed to each candidate's name. You took a magic marker and connected the arrow for the candidate you were voting for. If you connected both arrows for one race, your vote was thrown out because it was assumed you were an idiot.
Those ballots worked very well, and I would like very much to return to them. I do not trust the computers.
Well it is a red button. Another case for the lawyers. It should be a neutral color. /S
Tirades are perpetrated by those who feel the facts and eloquence of their arguments are easily dismissed/defeated or have no water to hold in the first place.
Extremely unimpressed with you.....
Or that someone programed a few machines to default to Menendez.
We have to fill in a "bubble" now. Previously we had the "complete the arrow" too. The arrows are definitely better, I agree.
How difficult is it to have an electronic voting maching that works. I've been using ATM's for 20 years and have never had a problem.
Jeesh
Could they un-select it?
Ours you had to push the button again to deselect the X.
I love our antique NY pull the lever style voting machine. We have gotten an extension on switching to the digital one and I hope they extend it forever.
Wow! You may have just nailed it! That is a very plausible scenario. It also would mean that the poll workers either have no way of positively verifying the person who just left the booth actually voted or are not correctly resetting the machine between votes. Yet another hole in the process.
We use optical mark readers for voting so I've never seen one of the touch screen machines, but I used to write control systems software which used a touch screen for input. There are so many holes in the electronic voting process as I've heard it described that I'm certain the voting process is less reliable with the new machines.
Look at my tag line.
I knew enough to vote for Lazio on the Conservative Party line, but I'm sure that without this kind of fraud Hillary would have lost.
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