2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumEvidence of a vote NOT being counted by a machine in California, as it happened!
How many other votes for Bernie weren't counted by the machine?? Were the machines ignoring the vote for president in general, or only if the voter voted for Bernie? Did it depend on which ballot was being read? It's not clear at all. Also, was this a statewide problem?? Either way, it seems clear that there was some machine error going on. A hand count of the ballots may be needed.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Conspiracy theory, mail in ballots, machine ballots, paper ballots counted by machine, what is left.
politicaljunkie41910
(3,335 posts)but the box contained only a slot in it, but it did not read the ballot at the time that it was input into the slot. The box also has a lock on it. My neighbors have worked as poll workers previously because the polling station used to be in our development and when they did, it was the same procedure. Everyone put their own ballot in the box which had a lock on it. There is nothing on the slot that reads the ballot at the time that you drop it in. And there was nothing within the slot capable of reading the ballot. It is my understanding that the ballots are not even counted there at the local polling place. They are picked up and taken to a another facility. Our ballot is probably what they call the Optic scanned although it's not scanned on site at the polling place.. We use this little tool that when you press it down it makes a black spot on your ballot.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)The mark is made. The boxes probably were checked before ballots was placed inside and verified there was not any ballots in the box, verified theyv were still locked before leaving and verified when delivered to their designation. More than likely the slots was sealed before departing. I have worked in a voting precinct with touch screens, verify before and after the day is over, if a break in lines we were verifying our counts through the day, at the end of the day we balanced on counts. I don't believe in conspiracy theories.
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)I'm 100% against machine voting.
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)And in cases where there's a problem poll workers give out provisional ballots, which are checked and counted, which is why it's taking so long.
https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_equipment_by_state
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)Which is a +.
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Unfortunately for the voter the poll workers addressed his problem and he got his Bernie vote.
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Agschmid
(28,749 posts)You know... Priorities and all.
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)It would also be helpful to know what state he's in. If California, and he was registered American Independent, he shouldn't have been allowed to vote in the D primary, but if he was wrongly registered he could have gotten a provisional ballot which would eventually be be checked and counted. But the video is so crappy it's impossible to tell what the holdup was.
But the long an short is, where Calif uses DREs, it requires a paper trail, so voters can check their votes, which this voter seems to have done, and then poll workers helped him clear it up.
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)He said it was the weirdest thing. They kept trying to get the machine to read it but it wouldn't.
brooklynite
(94,950 posts)...and can't figure out a way to give the voter a false positive report that their vote was cast?
It's so hard getting good help these days.
randome
(34,845 posts)Bleacher Creature
(11,258 posts)That should tell you something.
ThinkCritically
(241 posts)He keeps asking people to wait until all the votes are actually counted. But people are having issues with patience these days.
CorkySt.Clair
(1,507 posts)ThinkCritically
(241 posts)each paycheck, at least until 2018, to support progressive candidates and policies.
Lord Magus
(1,999 posts)reformist2
(9,841 posts)FSogol
(45,582 posts)Last edited Sun Jun 19, 2016, 04:21 PM - Edit history (1)
Is that a violation? It is here in VA.
KK9
(81 posts)...in that video, since it's upside down much of the time.
I've worked the polls here in my Massachusetts town. We vote on paper ballots that are put into a Diebold Accu Vote scanning machine. Before the polls open, an election officer opens the machine, makes sure there are no ballots in it, then locks it.
Voters mark their paper ballots with a black marker, then put it in the machine. The machine will reject it if there are no marks, stray marks, an "overvote" (say voting for two candidates in a race where you can only select one) and sometimes for non-obvious reasons. If the ballot is rejected, the voter can try putting it in again or in a different way. If it is still rejected, a poll worker will go over the ballot with them (away from everyone else) to try to determine the issue. If the voter made a mistake, or even if there is no obvious reason, they can either mark their ballot "SPOILED" and get another one, or they can go ahead and cast the rejected ballot. In the case of the latter, an election officer will use a key to open a special auxilliary drawer on the machine and place the ballot in there, then relock.
I always closed the polls, at 8pm, when the polls closed, I'd be given a stack of ballots from one or more auxilliary drawers. Working with a partner, to check each other's work, I'd try my best to determine what the voters intent was and hand count that ballot. If a mark was too faint to machine register, made near, but not exactly on the right place, or they didn't make the correct mark (a dark line) but wrote something like "yes", I'd count that vote, as their intent was clear (to a human if not a machine). If they overvoted, say checked Clinton AND Sanders, neither vote counted. If their intent wasn't clear on one race, but was on the others, I'd hand tally the clear ones. Sometimes votes wrote commentary or drew pictures on ballots that were otherwise clear, requiring hand counting. Sometimes, not often, I'd have a ballot that seemed to have no problems and the machine should have read, but since it didn't, I'd count that by hand.
The machines counted the votes that were machine readable. Workers hand counted the others. Every ballot had to be accounted for, so that the number of people who checked in and took a ballot = number of ballots counted by machine + number of ballots counted by hand. The warden supervised that. Everyone's work was observed by another election worker and a police officer.
The ballots from the machines and the hand count tallies were sealed in separate boxes at the end of the night and sent to the Town Clerk's office. She releases "unofficial" election results, often that night or early the next morning, then "official" election results some days later, after she and her staff had reviewed everything (I'm not sure what that process entails).
If that California incident happened here (I get the impression the guy was having trouble getting his vote counted by the machine?), he could have kept trying, which I take it he did, or he could have handed it to a poll worker to put in the hand count drawer.
I've always been pretty confident voting in this system. Especially after working in it.