Problems voting with paper ballots (Shallow Thoughts)

Problems voting with paper ballots

BoingBoing (the esteemed Cory Doctorow) already has coverage of some of the problems people are encountering trying to vote here in Santa Clara County (California) this morning.

Like the Vote Save Error #9. Use the Backup Voting Procedure." message one voter got when trying to use the touchscreens.

But about that backup voting procedure: it seems that even if you can persuade them to give you a paper ballot (bring your own pen, even though the Voter Information Guide specifically says on page 164 that after signing in at the polls the voter "receives a paper ballot along with an approved marking device"), the ballots cast on paper are being put in "provisional" envelopes, yet without the identifying information on the envelope which is used to approve provisional ballots. One really wonders if such votes will be counted.

I wonder if it will be possible to get statistics after the fact for the total number of paper ballots counted in each precinct (and how many of them were provisional)? For comparison, I wish someone was doing exit polls to get an idea of what percentage of people are requesting paper ballots.

Meanwhile, Kelly Martin reports that in Cook County, Ill. voting is no longer by secret ballot. Each ballot has a number on it which is correlated with the voter's name.

One of the boingboing comments points out that voting problems should be reported to voteproblem.org. The EFF suggests using the Election Incident Reporting System.

Stay tuned.

Tags: politics, election04, elections, voting
[ 10:58 Nov 02, 2004    More politics/election04 | permalink to this entry | ]