Black marks
If you were to choose one legislative election this year out of all 170 seats that you would get 100 percent, scrupulously right, which one would it be. Say a magic genie came to the Board of Elections and said, “I’ll grant you one district where absolutely nothing will go wrong and you can be assured the county will be handled accurately,” which one would they have chosen.
Yeah, I’m thinking the race between Democratic House Speaker Jim Black and Republican Hal Jordan might have been their pick too.
Which makes this report from our friends at the Associated Press all the more, what’s the word, perplexing maybe?:
RALEIGH (AP) — The outcome of the close legislative race between House Speaker Jim Black and Republican Hal Jordan became more uncertain Tuesday after Mecklenburg County election officials said that nearly 450 ballots were cast by people outside of their district.Meeting in an emergency session, election board officials said voters in a split precinct received ballots with the Black-Jordan race when they should have received ballots for another House district, Mecklenburg deputy elections director Jo Winkler said.
Comments (1)
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Mark;
There are always problems in Mecklenburg, remember 2004?
It is going to be incredibly difficult to recount the toilet paper ballots on the touchscreens in Mecklenburg County.
We have always urged all counties to purchase paper ballot based optical scan.
We publicly opposed the touchscreens for many reasons, including the flimsy paper trail.
None of the voting machine companies have come up with a good paper record on touchscreens for voters to check.
Other problems with touchscreens are calibration errors, more difficult for elderly to use, more expensive, more machines required.
And you wrote about how Jerry Meek, chairman of the NC Dem party endorsed paper ballot optical scan in a letter to all county boe on Dec 8, 2005.
http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051228/NEWSREC0101/512280308
The touchscreen machines that Mecklenburg chose to go with - have a "paper trail", not a paper ballot, and the "trail" prints on cash register like paper tape of thermal paper.
Another aspect of the trail is that it does not print a "summary" of the voter's ballot, but instead prints everything the voter does EXCEPT for a summary.
Recount that!
We even got Professor David Jefferson to write a letter urging that this design be corrected to print a summary to make recounts and voter verification of the ballots better.
http://votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=77&Itemid=171
Mecklenburg didn't even have a "paper trail" on 10 machines in the primary, because a touchscreen
"paper trail" depends on poll workers from the very beginning to get everything right.
The Charlotte Observer reported that:
"May. 04, 2006 Few voting glitches pop up
- Printers on 10 machines had paper put on backwards, and poll workers didn't realize the printers weren't working properly, Dickerson said."
There was no printout on these machines, so in the event of a recount, there could not be a manual recount.
Poll workers never get everything right, but with optical scan voting, that doesn't matter.
You can vote even if the machines never are switched on. Your paper ballot can always be recounted.
Posted on November 17, 2006 1:31 AM