Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
From the Charleston Daily Mail…
On Monday, the Secretary of State’s office notified the County Clerk’s office of a problem in the programming cards used in the [ES&S] M100 machines.
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“If a person votes a straight party ticket, then deviates from the party in the Supreme Court section, the machine still counts the vote as a full straight ticket, Carper said.
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The county had a mandatory public test of the machines last week.
This last sentence is important. The county, and apparently other counties around the state, had already done their Logic and Accuracy testing and they had failed to find this problem. Thus the L&A testing was not thorough enough to find problems in the ballot programming done by ES&S. Of course, there is another question and that is who did the L&A testing? The county? Or ES&S?
And, as we’ve implored recently, do not use the straight-party ticket option when voting! Machines have failed across the country, in state after state, to count such votes accurately!
What affect did this have on the Lincoln County Primary results. As we had over 500 Republicans changed their registration to non-partisan to vote for a Democratic Candidate these voters voted a split ticket. Was that vote counted? According to a recent news article the number of voters reported to S.O.S. was some 1100 voters short of the actual vote count? Where is accountability for election results?
Would like a reply. Please
Thanks You
This problem was found on the general election ballot programming provided by ES&S. There may have been problems in the primary but that is not what this report is discussing.
We had a similar problem in Austin a few years ago. If you voted straight ticket, the machine didn’t allow you to vote on any of the propositions. It would be best not to vote straight ticket.