Voting Machines Wreak Havoc in Maryland Elections

An anonymous reader writes, "Voting machines are wreaking havoc in Maryland elections today. From the article: 'Election Day in Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's opened in chaos and frustration this morning, as a series of problems and missteps left thousands of citizens unable to vote or forced to cast provisional ballots... Montgomery County's Board of Elections held an emergency meeting and agreed to petition the Circuit Court to extend voting times until 9 p.m.' It's simply shameful."

Comments

HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT?

[DurendalMac]

Seriously, voting machines don't have to be complicated. A very simple, stripped down OS that gives you a screen where you punch in your info, then cast your vote. WOW! I cannot fathom how the fucking idiots who write this software can't just make them WORK. It's not an entire computer people, it's just a very simple kiosk. Christ, I could probably write some software that would do the job better than these boobs.

Re:DECEPTIVE ARTICLE, User Error

[BandwidthHog]

My initial reaction was the same as yours, and I rushed to this thread to be the first to be highly moderated for pointing that out. But when I saw that other posters had already pointed it out, I returned to continue reading the article and found these three quotes:

Poll workers found that screens on new electronic poll books froze or shut down as they tried to record arriving voters.

Bernice Wuethrich, voting at Grace United Methodist Church on New Hampshire Avenue, said she cast her ballot on the electronic machines after they were up and running. But even then, she said, not everyone's name was coming up on the computer.

"They don't have a printed list" of eligible voters, "they don't have a backup," Wuethrich said. "So when the computer goes down, they can't even look at a list to see who's eligible to vote."

Louise Bradley said she arrived at her polling station after the electronic cards had been delivered, but her card did not work properly. When she got to the section of the ballot listing candidates for the Democratic central committee, it was already filled out. Bradley said she had to remove the computer's choices and insert her own.

So it looks like, contrary to first impressions, the article summary was unfortunately correct.