[LINK] Election Board Workers' Error Hinders Voting

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Election Board Workers' Error Hinders Voting
By Christian Davenport and Miranda S. Spivack
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 13, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091200535_pf.html

The most basic of human errors threw Maryland's primary election into 
chaos yesterday: Someone forgot the wallet-size plastic cards needed to 
operate the voting machines in Montgomery County, frustrating early 
morning voters who lined up outside polling places and often were turned 
away without voting.

Courts ordered polls to remain open an extra hour in the county and in 
Baltimore, where at least two dozen polling places opened late, but it 
seemed doubtful that the extensions would resolve the confusion.

Some Montgomery County polling places didn't receive word of the order 
to remain open until minutes before 8 p.m., when they had been scheduled 
to close. Others ran short on the paper ballots that the court 
instructed be used during the extended hour of voting, with voters 
scribbling their choices on scraps of paper in Takoma Park.

"You had to laugh. It got more and more ludicrous," said Dennis Desmond, 
who cast his "vote" on a discarded flier handed to him by election 
officials after ballots ran out in Takoma Park.

He said election workers rushed to a nearby pharmacy to buy envelopes in 
which the makeshift ballots could be sealed.

The number of paper ballots cast won't be known until today. They will 
not be counted until Monday.

When all of the county's 238 polling places opened in Montgomery, the 
state's most populous jurisdiction, the electronic voting machines were 
inoperable. Many precincts handed out provisional paper ballots as soon 
as the precinct doors opened at 7 a.m., but at some polls those ballots 
ran out, and at others election officials didn't know that paper ballots 
were an option. They just told people to come back later.

Although the cards necessary to activate most of the voting machines 
arrived by 8:30, election officials said some of the machines weren't 
working until 10 a.m. -- three hours after polls opened. Voters said 
some didn't start operating until even later.

Partisan bickering broke out, with the governor blaming the Democratic 
legislature, and the Democrats pointing the finger at the governor.

Nancy H. Dacek, who was appointed as president of the county's Board of 
Elections by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), apologized for the error.

"We regret what happened this morning. It was just a fluke," Dacek said. 
"There was a glitch. It's now been taken care of."

The cards that went astray are called voter access cards and look like 
white ATM cards with a golden computer chip embedded in them. They are 
issued to voters once election judges verify they are registered to 
vote. When the cards are placed into the voting machines, the ballot 
appears on the touch screen.

County election officials said they simply forgot to include the cards 
in the supply bags provided to the chief election judge of each polling 
place.

The trouble began Friday when eight county election employees and a 
supervisor met in a locked room on the first floor of the election 
headquarters building at 751 Twinbrook Pkwy. in Rockville.

They packed the large canvas bags that were to contain the items needed 
to operate the computerized voting system. But the stacks of the 
critical voter access cards were forgotten, locked a few feet away 
behind a caged door. Once the bags were packed, they were padlocked for 
security, and polling place judges were prohibited from opening them 
until yesterday morning.

About 6 a.m., the judges realized the cards were missing, said Margaret 
Jurgensen, the county's elections director. She said the county has 
checklists to keep employees from forgetting to pack any of the items, 
but she did not know whether they were used.

Jurgensen said the error "was a team effort."

Linda H. Lamone, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said she was 
appalled by the day's events and said it was the work of poorly trained 
election judges.

"We push the information out to them," said Lamone, who was appointed by 
Ehrlich's Democratic predecessor, Parris N. Glendening. "If they choose 
not to follow it, there's nothing we can do."

Ehrlich's initial reaction on learning of the problems was: "That's 
negligence. That's inexcusable."

Later in the day, the governor added: "The training is Linda Lamone's 
responsibility, period. The apology should come from her. . . . She's 
going to have to answer a lot of questions tomorrow."

But Douglas F. Gansler (D), the Montgomery state's attorney who is 
running for attorney general, joined several other candidates who 
lambasted the county election board yesterday.

"The level of incompetence that led to this is almost surreal -- 
especially in Montgomery County," he said.

When David Belkin showed up to vote at a polling place in Bethesda at 
8:30 a.m., he was told he could vote by provisional ballot, but the line 
was too long and he was late for a meeting.

"The degree of incompetence is beyond belief," he said. "It's just 
incredible. It's not like this was a surprise. They knew the election 
was coming. And whoever is responsible should be fired today."

Gareth Rosenau, a lawyer with the Federal Railroad Commission, said the 
voting cards arrived shortly after he did at the polling place in Takoma 
Park. But when the registered Democrat put his card into the voting 
machine, a Republican ballot appeared on the screen, he said.

Other voters were having the same problem, he said, and complained to 
election officials, who didn't know how to fix the machines so they 
would produce the proper ballots.

"I felt like I was in a Third World country," Rosenau said.

Baltimore was also plagued by election day problems, prompting a judge 
there to extend voting by an hour as well.

The Maryland Democratic Party alleged in a court filing that at least 75 
precincts in Baltimore opened late because election officials failed to 
show up on time and struggled with the electronic voting machines the 
city was using for the first time.

Baltimore Elections Administrator Gene Raynor said there were problems 
with some judges showing up on time. But he said the number of affected 
precincts was closer to "two dozen."

"When you have 1,500 [election judges], you're going to have problems 
with some of them," he said.

States across the country scrambled to revamp their election systems 
after the debacle in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. In 
an attempt to avoid hanging chads that plagued that election, many 
states, including Maryland, moved to an electronic voting system. 
Montgomery has been using the electronic voting machines since 2002 
without significant problems.

Critics have described the electronic systems as vulnerable, and a 
report in June by Common Cause concluded that they "are highly 
vulnerable to machine malfunction and human manipulation." It also found 
that Maryland was one of 17 states with voting systems that are at "high 
risk" because their machines don't have a paper ballot backup system.

In Prince George's County, about 15 to 20 of the county's 206 precincts 
were delayed an average of about 25 minutes yesterday morning, according 
to Alisha Alexander, deputy elections administrator for the Prince 
George's County Board of Elections. Most of the precincts were in the 
northern part of the county, including Beltsville and University Park.

Alexander said about 20 technicians, who were scheduled to deliver and 
set up electronic poll books by 6 a.m., quit yesterday morning, 
resulting in long lines and frustrated voters at numerous polling places.

"We had to find other staff and send them out," said Robert J. 
Antonetti, the interim Prince George's elections administrator.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

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Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au