Scattered Problem Stories

Here are links to a set of stories about problems at the polls.
From AP:

Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts early Tuesday, delaying voters in Indiana, Ohio and Florida and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead.

In Cleveland, voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touchscreen machines that they couldn’t get to start properly until about 10 minutes after polls opened. “We got five machines — one of them’s got to work,” said Willette Scullank, a trouble shooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.

In Indiana’s Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper because poll workers didn’t know how to run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler. She said it could take most of the day to fix all of the machine-related issues. Election officials in Delaware County, Ind., planned to seek a court order to extend voting after an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts there. County Clerk Karen Wenger said the cards that activate the machines were programmed incorrectly.

Here is a great story about the use of e-Slates, which ARE NOT TOUCHSCREEN!

Last May, Lancaster County voting officials declared themselves pleased with the new eScan and eSlate voting machines used for the first time in the primary election.

But in today’s general election, things didn’t work quite so smoothly. As of 10:30 this morning, 57 out of the county’s 275 eScan machines — the “paper ballot” machines — were malfunctioning. That’s about 21 percent. The machines are in polling places throughout the county. As a result, county officials decided by late morning to keep all the county’s 232 polling places open until 9 p.m. The problem was twofold, according to Mary Stehman, the head of the county election bureau.