Primaries turnout prompts concerns for Nov.

[brooklynite]

Source: USA Today

Record turnout in this year's presidential primaries has election officials worried about possible shortages of machines, ballots and poll workers in November.

In 17 of the 24 primaries held so far, turnouts were larger than any in the past 40 years, the result of competitive Democratic and Republican contests and earlier primaries. Paper ballots ran out from California to the District of Columbia, more poll workers were needed in Arizona and an electronic voter registration database crashed in Connecticut.

"The biggest problem during the primary season has been too many voters," says Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org, which tracks voting issues. "Time and time again, the problem has been turnout being up higher than even the most optimistic projection."

Now officials from Virginia to Texas are warning that they will need more voting machines in the fall to avoid long lines.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-02-28-Turnout_N.htm

---

I can accept there may be a voting machine problem, but having inadequate paper ballots at this point is inexcusable.

[NMDemDist2]

1. our county clerk in 2006 ordered ballots for 90% of registered voters

and she was worried

I think the 90% number is a good one

[Bandit]

19. I hope you are right but young "voters" are notorious for not showing up

Let us hope they are finally starting to pay attention and even if Obama doesn't get the nomination they still turn out. I won't hold my breath.

[Lasher]

2. Any history of problems like this in mostly Republican districts?

Long lines, crashing machines, and the like always seem to crop up in predominately Democratic districts.

[brooklynite]

4. But people aren't turning out in droves to VOTE for Republicans...

[femrap]

13. The rabid evangelicals are doing what 'the party'

says and being good little sheep...they vote for the Dem that will be easiest to beat.

[rox63]

3. 2004 redux?

:scared:

[apnu]

8. Yes, it was waned in 2004

... and nobody paid attention to it. People were screaming about Ohio and nobody (in the upper levels of the Dem party) did anything about it until well after Kerry conceded. (Way too early IMO).

I fully expect to hear more of this stuff and I fully expect to see a large group of political ostriches, or and worse, ineptitude in the local districts.

Voting has been lame here in the U.S. for several generations. Nobody seems to know how to deal with a healthy, vibrant, voting public. 2004 was a hotly contested general election, and yet only 40% of the total eligable, registered, voters bothered to show up!!!

And now we see swelling voter rolls as citizens, *gasp!*, exercise their rights to vote?

Yeah, stuff is going to break, because of laziness, incompetence and political weakness. Franklin and Jefferson must be spinning in their graves like tops these days.

[mac2]

5. My town had less turnout than other years.

It is a Republican area which is turning Democratic. Poll workers said people didn't like the choices.

If Dems give away this next election it is their fault. They want it that way.

[jojo54]

6. After the last 2 generals, did they HONESTLY expect couch potatoes???

"There is nothing wrong with your televisions set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission".

[madmom]

7. So this is Feb 29, the election is in Nov., there's 8 months to fix it!

[thecrow]

9. I asked for a paper ballot when I voted

They wouldn't give me one because the "machines are working"
I said, what if that were not the case? How many paper ballots do you have on hand?
None, he said.

This is in Northern VA

[Demeter]

10. What If They Called an Election, And Everybody Came?

We had nearly 100% turnout in 2004 Presidential election in the precinct I worked. We had plenty of ballots on hand, and a large number of absentee voters, due to the age of the precinct population.

There's no excuse for not running a proper election except incompetence and/or fraud.

[bemildred]

11. The politicians don't want us to vote, could it be clearer? nt

[samdogmom]

12. So..get a clue guys! This is going to be a record turnout year!

Get the ballots printed ahead of time (gosh dang it--grrrr!) OR have a backup printer standing guard on election day ready to fire up the presses!

How hard is this--it's February for god sakes--the election is in November. There's PLENTY of time to get ready!

[Lone_Star_Dem]

14. They have plenty of time to get things in order

If there's any indication of shortages suppressing votes in November they could end up with a riot of angry voters on their hands.

[mimitabby]

15. ya think??

[Fly by night]

16. It's the DREs, stupid. They're not only unverifiable and expensive, they are also slow!!

The real problem is that, in addition to the many other problems associated with voting on DREs, they are an incredibly slow way to vote. The following is a comparison we did here in Tennessee of the efficiency of opscan voting vs. DREs. It is no wonder that Fortune magazine picked DREs as the worst new technology of 2003.
----

Two small examples of the inefficiency of DREs versus optical scan voting systems

1) Two identical groups of 21 voters are selected to vote either on an optical scan or a DRE. Given the size of the group, there would be no reason to have more than one piece of each type of equipment for them to vote on. (Besides, that keeps the cost comparison roughly equivalent.) For this test, each voter in each group is paired with a voter in the other group to spend exactly the same amount of time completing their ballot and having it counted. For the optical scan voters, that involves completing a paper ballot and having it read by the op scan. For the DRE voters, both completing the ballot and having it counted occurs on the same DRE.

For this example, each group of voters has a fast voter who completes the completing the ballot/counting process in three minutes. The voters then stair-step (in terms of time needed) so that each next pair of voters takes another 30 seconds to vote (so one voter in each group takes 3 1/2 minutes, one voter each takes 4 minutes, etc), all the way until the slowest pair of voters takes 13 minutes to complete their ballot and have it counted. (I am not calculating the time necessary to find the voters on the rolls and to sign the pollbooks. Let's just assume that these tasks take the same amount of time for both groups.) How much time does it take each group to complete all their ballots and have all of them counted?

Optical scan group (n= 21) -- 13 minutes DRE group (n= 21) -- 2 hours and 48 minutes

Why is the opscan group so fast and the DRE group so slow? Well, all opscan voters can start completing their ballots at the same time, and can have their ballots read when they are finshed, the only time they need to interface with the opscan machine. Since it takes so little time to read the opscan ballot, having 30 seconds between each voter means that there is no time needed to wait to have the opscan ballot read. While the slow voters are still filling out their ballots, the faster voters are having their completed ballots counted by the opscan. However, with the DRE, since the same piece of equipment is used to complete the ballot and to count the votes, only one person can complete the ballot and cast her/his vote on that piece of equipment at a time. So regardless of how fast or how slow individual voters are, they must wait until all the voters in front of them have finished before getting their chance to start filling in their ballots.

2) Once again, two identical groups of voters are selected, with 21 voters in each group. In this example, each group contains five voters who take 3 minutes to complete the ballot, five who take four minutes, five who take five minutes, five who take six minutes and a single voter who takes seven minutes. Once again, all other voting-related tasks are assumed to take the same amount of time. In this example, how long does it take each group to complete all their ballots and have them all counted?

Optical scan (n= 21) -- 7 minutes DRE (n= 21) -- 97 minutes

Since the opscan machines read ballots so quickly, one group of five voters (e.g., the 3 minute voters) could be fnished having their ballots read before the next group (4 minute voters) are finished completing their ballots and ready to have them read. But again, since the DRE only allows one voter at a time to complete her/his ballot and have it counted, everyone else has to sit on their hands until everyone in front of them in line to vote has done so.

Under these two examples, there are only two ways to speed up the voting with the DREs to complete the election in the same amount of time as with the optical scan:

a) buy more DREs (10-15 more) and hope that slow voters don't end up using the same DRE, or
b) have DRE voters get discouraged with the long wait and leave the polling place without voting.

So if the time it takes to complete an election were the only criterion for selecting voting equipment, opscan would win hands-down. Add to that the facts that opscans are much less expensive per unit of votes cast and they start and end with a paper ballot that is available for an audit or recount, the selection really should be a no-brainer. So what is our problem (really) here in Tennessee?
--------------------------

"Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced." H.L. Mencken

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair

[Support the ACLU]

17. thanks for posting this

[Doctor_J]

18. They're floating this stuff now so we won't complain when we don't get

to vote in November. Let's try to remember folks - just like the private health insurers' main devotion is to their stockholders, not their insurees, the private voting companies must make money first, and provide an honest election second. Plus most of them are run by right-wing republikkkons who hate democracy as much as I hate them

[Peace Patriot]

20. Election officials who are anti-voter WOULD BE concerned about record turnout

because...

a) They spent millions in taxpayers' money for crapass voting machines that constantly breakdown and malfunction, and have to be "patched," repaired, upgraded, maintained, at yet more cost--and there is no money left to pay for extra machines, ballots, precinct locations and other needs of an aroused voting public;

b) The corporate culture of secrecy and corruption that they have adopted in lieu of public service is hostile to big turnouts, citizen oversight and majority rule, and positively seeks disempowerment and disenfranchisement of ordinary citizens;

c) They fear public getting onto what they have done--sold democracy down the river, for power, for lobbying perks, for future lucrative employment in the election theft industry--and don't want big turnout because that means bigger public awareness, not just of the cauldron of corruption in Washington DC but also of the smaller cups of corruption in nearly every county election office in the country.


Recently, the "Diebold shills" (pro-corporate, pro-secrecy) who run the election systems in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, in California, sued the new Secretary of State Debra Bowen to prevent implementation of mild reforms in the auditing of votes (automatic handcounts as a check on machine fraud). They lost, but that is their attitude--they serve the corporate vendors, not the voters, and want no transparency, no auditing, total corporate "trade secret" control of election results. A couple of years ago, they and other CA election officials, including Conny McCormack of Los Angeles (who did a sales brochure for Diebold!), sued another reforming Sec of State, Kevin Shelley, and drove him from office (on entirely bogus corruption charges), after he sued Diebold, decertified their touchscreens and demanded to see their "trade secret" code just prior to the 2004 election. These kind of election officials--and they are not that unique--hate and fear the voters. A big turnout of well-informed, highly conscious and aware voters is the last thing in the world they want. It is the last thing in the world that the Bushite-connected corporate vendors want. It is the last thing in the world that the war profiteers and global corporate predators who have hijacked our country want. They want stupid, uninformed voters who never question authority, and vast numbers of disempowered, disenfranchised citizens who don't vote because they don't think it makes any difference, and, with corporations counting the votes with "trade secret" code, and virtually no audit/recount controls, that is a reasonable judgment to make (although there is evidence that the voters, by big turnout, can outvote the machines).

We need a Big Broom to sweep out these election officials who complain of big turnouts, and aren't prepared for big turnouts, and can't be bothered to handcount our frigging votes, and whine and complain about transparency measures, and try to prevent them, in collusion with the corporate vendors.

Electionline.org is a corporate-run electronic voting pusher, and it's no surprise at all to see its director describing big turnout as "a problem." Think about this statement of his: "The biggest problem during the primary season has been too many voters...".

They have the nerve to describe the highly expensive (corporate profits) replacement of touchscreens (paperless voting) with optiscans (paper ballot that is rarely or never counted, "trade secret" code central tabulators), as "Back to Paper" ("Back to Paper: A Case Study" - electionline.org). A total shuckin jive position on corporate vote counting.

This is the corporate fallback position--after their total screwing of the voters and the taxpayers with paperless (no audit) voting machines. "Too many voters," my friggin ass.