Jammed Machines and Long Lines Frustrate Voters in New York City

[brooklynite]

Source: New York Times

A two-page ballot appears to have caused havoc for scanning machines at polling places across New York City, as scores of broken scanners brought voting to a standstill at many locations on Tuesday.

Imagine that feeling of an office copier jammed with paper just as you’re trying to fetch an important document. Now multiply that feeling by 100. That’s about how people felt as they waited in lines that circled around school gyms and around the block at their local polling places. Voters waited helplessly as the scanners stood idle.

By 10 a.m., all four scanners at Public School 130 in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, had broken down, freezing the line of voters who stood shoulder-to-shoulder as the line grew out the door. The police was called in to help. One officer opened emergency ballot boxes beneath each scanner. Voters were told to tuck their ballots, which would be counted later, through slits in the boxes.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/nyregion/nyc-voting-machines.html

[Honeycombe8]

1. So they're using punch ballots that they feed thru the machine to be electronically read?

Those must be old.

[Cal Carpenter]

2. Not necessarily punch - where I am we use paper ballots

and mark the people we want to vote for with markers, not a punch machine.

When we're done, we go to the machine and feed the ballot in and it counts them (reminds me of scantron tests when I was a kid) and keeps the paper copies secure.

[Bengus81]

3. Same here and the paper being fed in is not a full size sheet of paper

More like 5-6 inches wide and maybe 10-12 inches long.

[Cal Carpenter]

4. That's funny, ours is bigger than a typical 8.5x11 sheet

At least the length of legal size, maybe wider too.

[Princess Turandot]

8. That's what we use in NYC...nt

[machoneman]

5. The heck with NYC! Here in red DuPage County, IL as total disaster as....

they dumped the old printed page two book system of each registered voter from A-L & M-Z which allowed rapid look-ups to verify who you are. Instead, two staffers had to manually enter each voters name in a computerized look-up table to verify. Since only two folks on laptops were doing data entry, one an older fellow (I should talk!) who typed even slower than me, the backups lasted 40+ minutes with 30-40 folks in line all day long.

I know this as I had to go 3 times (9:10, 10:15 and finally 1:48) to finally decide on my last visit to wait in a long line for my turn. Had they competent typists (and three not two) things would have gone far faster.

Yet, if red voters walked away, I'm happy!

GO BLUE!!!!!

[bullwinkle428]

6. I for one am SHOCKED, given the general efficiency of the subway system.

[roamer65]

7. I love our system in Michigan.

Flows nicely. They scan your state ID if you provide it and your get your ballot. You fill in the boxes and simply feed the PAPER BALLOT through an optical scan tabulator. It tells you if you did it right or not. Done.

[denvine]

9. It's like we live in a third world country

when it comes to voting.

[jumptheshadow]

10. My ballot jammed in Brooklyn

It got wet from my jacket, but ultimately went through. Meanwhile, there were two poll watchers monitoring my situation closely.

We went during the early afternoon and there was a constant stream of voters in and out, with a 10 to 15 person line for the balloting process, which went quickly for most people. All the privacy desks were filled -- and there were quite a few of them.