While Ohio faces continued problems with their voting machines, one thing is becoming readily apparant: One man, one vote is no longer considered the standard. The AP is reporting a host of new problems with Ohio’s voting system after Tuesday’s primary election:
Election officials had trouble printing ballot receipts, finding lost votes and tabulating election results in Tuesday’s primary. Some election workers were late or did not show up at all in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, the state’s largest. Others could not figure out how to turn on the machines.
“Ohio’s quickly getting this reputation as most corrupt and maybe most incompetent,” said Chris Link, executive director of the
American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, which fielded dozens of complaints from voters.
Being the one who advised Michael Badnarik to take Ohio to court after the 2004 elections, I’ve been following that state’s response in cleaning up their system. The one thing which is becoming quite clear over time is that the standard for determining if an election result is valid deals with statisitics and no longer relies on the age-old tradition of one man, one vote. Here’s an example:
Glitches were reported across the state, and a few local races remained undecided Wednesday while counting continued. The number of outstanding votes was too small to affect races for governor, Congress and statewide offices.
Columbus attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who handles voting-rights cases, said many of the problems were expected. “You could see in the absence of adequate training, people could just screw up,” he said.
And another:
Cuyahoga County was searching for memory cards holding votes from 74 polling locations. Spokeswoman Jane Platten said the cards might have been left in machines, but she would not discuss details, citing security concerns. The county had reported results from about 98 percent of precincts by Wednesday night.
And another:
Link, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the problems went far beyond minor snags that could be expected, including complaints that voters were sent away by poll workers who were perplexed by the machines. In those cases, voters should have been offered paper ballots.
And another:
Workers failed to open one polling place until 1:30 p.m. Robert Bennett, the state GOP chairman and head of the Cuyahoga Elections Board, said they might have been criminally negligent and referred the case to prosecutors.
And another:
“We’ve had poll workers with the old system who after 10 years still made mistakes,” Damschroder said. “It’s going to be a learning curve no matter what we do.”
See how they excuse themselves from being 100% accurate:
In North Carolina, the state’s election chief also reported a good experience. Gary Bartlett said the machines arrived in February, giving officials two months to test the systems and instruct poll workers. Only minor problems arose in the primary.
“For a first-time rollout, we’ve got to be pleased,” Bartlett said.
Since when is “only minor problems” considered a good experience? The only “good experience” can be the vote of every citizen being properly counted.
sucker, ʟʟᴄ