In New Jersey, Gov. John Corzine was kept from voting when he wanted to in Hoboken because of malfunctioning Sequoias. In Warren County the machines behaved so badly that the poll workers resorted to paper ballots.
Gideon urged listeners to visit his Web site www.votersunite.org, where election problems since 2004 are archived. There is also a sort of clearinghouse/ repository for anecdotal reports and other materials ignored by the mainstream press—government officials are most welcome to contribute their stories.
Now for the “bubble”: for the California primaries in Los Angeles County there was a class of voters who didn’t want to commit to a party, the DTS, “decline to state.” In this instance the ballot was designed for those wishing to cross over to the Democratic ticket. The problem is, in Los Angeles they vote on something like a punch card, instead putting ink within ovals on the ballot.
DTS voters are told to mark an oval at the top of the ballots indicating which party they will vote for, but more than one hundred thousand (and still counting) marked particular candidates they favored, but not the one that identified the associated party. “It’s easy to know what’s going on,” said Gideon, but such ballots are now being treated as undervotes, meaning that they won’t be counted. A photograph of the DTS ballots is featured at www.bradblog.com.
The case will end up in court or go to the secretary of state, he said. This loss won’t affect the outcome of the election there but will certainly affect the delegates.
And by the way, the Bucks County commissioners turned down their invitation to be interviewed on Voice of the Voters, which may be heard Wednesdays from 8 to 9 pm on Renaissance Radio, 1360 am, also accessible through CVI’s Web site www.voiceofthevoters.org.
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