Voter Given Wrong Ballot on Diebold Touch-Screen Machine, as the First Reports of 'Glitches' in the Buckeye State's General Election Begin...
By Brad Friedman on 10/4/2006, 1:53pm PT  

Of course, we've heard such reports during Primary Elections around the country already this year (see this one, where the Diebold touch-screen voting machine gave a voter a ballot for the wrong election, noticed only because he happened to be an eagle-eyed talk radio political reporter.)

Now, this just in yesterday from "bonobo", a blogger at dKos, on the first day of Early Voting on the same unreliable, hackable Diebold touch-screen voting machines, but this time in Franklin County, Ohio. And, again, from someone who happened to be politically involved enough to notice the "error"!...

And then it happened....the first choice I was given on page 2 was:

State Senate District 15
Ray Miller - Democrat
John M. Roscoe - Republican

I don't live in State Senate District 15. I live in State Senate District 3, soon to be represented by Emily Kreider. But if something didn't get fixed, she'd have to get elected without my vote, because she wasn't one of the choices I was offered. I have a local politics blog called Blue Bexley. I focus almost exclusively on two races. One is OH-12, Shamansky vs. Tiberi, and the other is Ohio State Senate District 3, Emily Kreider vs. David Goodman. If you were to scan through my blog you'd get an idea at how unhappy I was at this point.

First of all, I want my ballot. Second of all, I want to know how many people are going to vote for a barely contested Dem in SS15 instead of the Dem in the dead heat race in SS3.

Things got worse, and soon the Franklin County, OH Election Director, Matt Damschroder (the one who was docked thirty days pay last year for passing on a $10,000 "contribution" from a Diebold rep over to the Ohio Republican Party just prior to the 2004 Election, but who apparently still has the same job!) came out himself to help.

The voter's detailed account of the problem continues...

There is a serious problem on the first day of general election touch screen voting. The staff is trained, rested, ready, the machines are shiny and have that new touch screen smell, and yet, there is a serious problem. That is not so good.

Not good indeed. Especially since we imagine Director Damschroder won't be able to personally come out on Election Day and correct every "error" that will likely be occurring. That is, if voters even notice such "errors" at all! The one described above would easily be missed by your average voter.

The report ends ominously this way:

I hope to hell nobody reading this needs to write a novella to describe their voting experience, but I'm afraid I might end up reading more than a few.

We're afraid of that too, bonobo. In fact, we're counting on it...

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Article Categories: Diebold/Premier, Election Irregularities, Ohio, Election 2006