The One Way "Glitch"

By Anderson

And so it begins.

Numerously reported in the 2004 presidential election, early voters in West Virginia today are seeing exactly the same behaviour on touch screen voting machines as then: the touch screen visibly shows the virtual "box" for John McCain light up when voters touched the screen for Obama. In 2004, of course, voters saw the marvelous sight of Bush lighting up when Kerry was selected.

I always enjoy the ad hoc, on-the-spot poll workers suggestions about how to correct the odd and always one-way behaviour: you oaf, use your fingernail! How can you not know this?!

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.

When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.

On her third try, Matheney managed to cast votes for both Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman, Democratic candidates for the two open seats.

Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.

"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.

Thomas, who brought his daughter with him to the polls, said she had the same problem.

"After I finished, my daughter voted. When she pushed Obama, it went to McCain.

Election day has already been promised to be an unmitigated disaster. This is just one of many preludes to the looming meltdown.

The vital state of Colorado is also promising to be a likely electoral disaster area, where daft machines, secret voter roll purges, and other poll challenges will likely prevent huge numbers of citizens from actually casting a vote. The day's outlook: uncertain, with periods of increasing machine failure, poll worker confusion, conflicting instructions, vote challenges, a gobs of the voting public walking away from polling stations having been told that, oh well, you're not on "the list."

Comments

[Earl]

Jeebus...It's the Homer Simpson story...