Comments on: Minor Voting Irregularities

By: jldugger

jldugger — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Interestingly, Diebold makes both voting machines and ATMs. Perhaps they need more cross training events (I imagine they bought another company that made voting machines, rather than divert engineers from ATMS to a new product).

By: todd

todd — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

They are not allowed to leave ballots out in the open. There's a slot in the front (or is it the side?) of the box where they are supposed to put ballots that cannot be read for any reason. The cop will only be there until he decides to go get coffee. When I worked the polls, the cop was only there for about two hours. I have no idea where he went. But in no case whatever is the ballot to leave your hands without being put where it's supposed to be.

By: Adam Rosi-Kessel

Adam Rosi-Kessel — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Todd: makes sense. Someone should explain that to the poll workers in Roslindale. Based on what I gather from preliminary news reports, these sorts of problems are only the tip of the iceberg compared to what is happening elsewhere in the country.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Where was this polling place in roslindale?

By: Adam Rosi-Kessel

Adam Rosi-Kessel — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Greek Church/Cultural Center at Belgrade and Roberts.

By: UG

UG — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

The machine in my polling place in Lynn workded fine. My objection was having to carry the two-sided ballot across the room from the booth to the ballot box with many people milling about and able to see my selections. Not that I’m embarassed that I wrote myself in for every office!

By: Adam Rosi-Kessel

Adam Rosi-Kessel — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

The double-sided thing bothered me as well. Everyone was holding their ballots in an awkward half-folded way to attempt to preserve privacy. They would have had to provide three (rather than two) pages of ballots to keep them all one-sided, and I guess they decided not to spring for the extra paper.

By: todd

todd — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

re: two sided ballots.

There are “covers” that you can put your ballot into. They’re a sort of “privacy sleeve” that leaves enough of the the top of the ballot exposed for the reader machine to grab the ballot before it’s pulled in to be read.

The poll workers are supposed to offer them to you, but, at least when I worked there, 99-44/100% of the people didn’t want them, so we just sort of stopped, and left them on the table for people to take if they wanted one.

These things:
http://www.vogueelection.com/productssleeve.html
http://www.diebold.com/nasadmk/cgi-bin/desicatalog.pl?section=7&id=108