Thursday, August 5, 2010
Electronic Glitch Jeopardizes Completion of Countywide Voting
Posted by Jackson Baker on Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 11:58 AM
- JB
- Candidates Cohen, Newman, and Wade confer on voting-machine glitch
Voters at numerous precincts found themselves turned away at their designation polling locations on the grounds that they had already voted.
Some — like Geraldine Wade, who appeared at a Thursday morning press conference of Democratic candidates and officials — were able to secure a ballot after applying for provisional paper ballots, and after their voting records were checked against the Election Commission’s written records.
But such a process was time-consuming, and it was uncertain how many of the precinct officials were fully acquainted with such remedies.
Not only was it likely that numerous voters would not be able to complete the process of casting ballots, the specter existed that manual counting of provisional paper ballots would delay vote-counting well into late Thursday night or Friday morning. And another possibility was that the provisional paper ballots could run out, leaving large numbers of voters unable to vote at all.
The morning press conference was called at the headquarters of Randy Wade, the Democratic nominee for sheriff, and several other candidates attended. “It’s a computer world, and these machines haven’t worked,” said 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, who added that human programming errors could run the gamut from “criminal” to “negligent,” once the full circumstances were known.
In any case, the problem was countywide, and Wade indicated he thought the results of the countywide general election and the state and federal primary elections could be skewed to the degree that candidates could end up having to seek recourse in the courts.
Shep Wilburn, currently a candidate for election as Juvenile Court clerk and a former member of the Election Commission, said the problem possibly stemmed from defects in the Diebold voting machines used for the election and blamed state Republican election officials for stonewalling voting-machine reforms that were authorized by the 2008 General Assembly.
Upon conclusion of the Democrats' press conference, Trustee Regina Morrison Newman, one of the participants, went to vote at her precinct and reported that she, too, had "already voted." After completing a lengthy paperwork process, Newman was allowed to vote.
Neither Bill Giannini, Election Commission chair, nor Commission executive director Rich Holden were immediately available for comment.
A statement from Election Commission headquarters was released at mid-morning, however:During the opening of polls at 7:00 a.m., it was discovered that voters who may have voted EARLY in the May primary but had not Early Voted for the Augbust election were recognized by EPB’s (Electronic Poll Books) as having already voting in this election. In all elections, each precincts is equipped with a printed document containing the names of each participating voters in early/Absentee Voting and that is used to cross-check a voter’s eligibility.Any voter wh believes he or she is eligible may sign a Fail-Safe Affidavit and then vote in the same manner as any other voter.
While the number of potentially affected voters is very small, the SCEC regrets any inconvenience to any voters and is committed to ensuring that any and ALL eligible voters can participate.
Updates as they become available.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
Oh, GREAT! Just what we need--an inconclusive result (and, better yet, a reason for Herenton to contest the apparent inevitability of the outcome). Please tell me we won't have another situation like the Franken v. Coleman debacle in Minnesota, where we won't know the outcome for months.
The only thing worse than an inconclusive result, is getting courts involved in the process. If we didn't learn that lesson from Bush v. Gore, we never will.
P.S. What's Randy Wade wearing? It looks like some kind of smock. He's not working for you, is he, Smitty, while he waits to see if he's going to have a new job?
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completely trust Regina Morrison Newman...if she said this happened, it happened. have been told happened to another attorney friend of mine. if they screw with attorneys, heaven help the rest of us.
From the article, it doesn't appear to be an issue with the machines at all.
" ... apparently arising from the fact that early-voting records from a previous election were mistakenly loaded into the Election Commission’s electronic roll ..."
The machines can't be blamed if the humans running them don't give them the correct information.
Oh, this is just terrible. Shades of chads and staged front-yard Gore football and Katherine Harris. Brrrr. Willie is going to have a large time with this.
Marty: Yes, with traffic so heavy at the Midtown branch this week we've had to call in a couple of volunteers.
Freak, nobody has ever blamed the machines, just the ease with which they can be hacked, intentionally or accidentally.
Hot off the press (I even scooped JB on this one): guess who got "caught" in the bogus "you already voted" trap? Would you believe, BILL GIBBONS. He votes at the same polling location as I do, and the workers were all abuzz about it.
There's something deliciously ironic about the guy who would prosecute voter fraud, if there were any, being accused (wrongly, of course) of it.
Nonetheless, it's always salutary for someone involved with the justice system seeing what it's like to be falsely accused of something.
Congressman Steve Cohen has always believed that the best politics is doing the job you were elected to do well. Since elected in 2006, Steve has:
worked with President Obama on tax cuts to create and save jobs in the 9th Congressional District. Memphis is well on its way to becoming the prosperous city that we all deserve, and it is very important that we keep it on that path. Vote to re-elect Congressman Steve Cohen for District 9!
Jeff: I'm sorry if I misunderstood, but it seemed that you ("I've been warning about these Diebold machines for years.") and Packrat ("Yes indeed, these voting machines are completely trustworthy....") were looking to the machines for fault.
I apologize if I didn't understand.
Cobb...You are a well-meaning guy, but you're doing an inadvertent Steve Carrell act with your comments. They're...how to say it?...out of sync with the spirit of the thing here. Putting that another way (to adapt from the Bard), not only is the quality of mercy not strained, neither is the quality of Spin.
Trust me.
Is it possible that Wade is a shell of a politician and lacks the integrity to have ever even been considered for the office of Sheriff. I am in the process of obtaining electronic, audio and visual proof that one of, if not the true key to Wade's success in the primary victory was never recognized nor ever compensated for his works. This person wrote Wade's speeches, interview Q & A responses, as well as penned and researched ALL of the candidate's referenced statitistics used in debates and interviews. If I can convince this young man to turn this material over to us (The media), the story will forever taint the so called spotless reputation of The man Who cares. He played me a recording of Wade telling him that he could not have made it without him, and that if he (Wade) won the Primary that he would compensate him $3,000.00 - $4,000.00 dollars. To date, he has yet to even receive a phone call. Some unknown allegiance to Wade has kept him quiet to this point, but we are confident that Wade's lack of the same will bite him you know where. Stay tuned for the web release of the materials in the next couple of weeks to come.
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