Palm Beach County voting fiasco update.

[hay rick]

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/bucher-60000-bad-absentee-ballots-have-to-be-count/nSZTC/

From the article:

A printing error on some 60,000 absentee ballots sent to Palm Beach County voters this month could affect the outcome of every race that will be decided Nov. 6, including the hotly contested presidential election, Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said today.

Initially, it appeared the mistake would only cause confusion in the merit retention elections of three Florida Supreme Court justices. However, Bucher said, the error will make it impossible for tabulating machines to count votes on about half of the flawed ballots.

“It won’t be able to read them,” she said. “It will just kick them out.”

To assure all votes are counted, she has asked county officials to provide extra workers to help manually sort the ballots that have already begun streaming into her office. An Arizona company, Runbeck Election Services, which admitted it made the mistake, will pick up the tab.

This on top of the Palm Beach County software flipping problem: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021506625

I have to give credit to Susan Bucher for rooting out and examining these problems before the election. She is taking a lot of heat for what she is finding, but it is difficult to believe that counties with less proactive supervisors of elections are somehow immune to the same problems. Hang on to your seats.

[OldDem2012]

1. A printing "error", eh? Incredible. nt.

[LisaL]

3. That's palm beach county, the one that brought us "butterfly ballot" that was one of the reasons

we ended up with Bush. Nice to see they are still at it.

[Xipe Totec]

5. Tuttle/Buttle nt

[slackmaster]

2. I take back my comment in a Meta thread about PBC election officials being "borderline incompetent"

They're fully incompetent.

[hay rick]

6. The opposite scenario is much scarier.

What if PBC election officials uncovered the problems because they are competent? That would leave you wondering about possible mischief in the other 66 Florida counties. Frankly, that's my biggest concern.

[RobertEarl]

10. PBC officials are competent

And since these are paper ballots the printing mistake is easily fixed just by hand counting. If it were an electronic mistake it would only become known after the election.

[KansDem]

4. Why don't we just mark a ballot and have it hand-counted?

I don't understand this. There just seems to be too much going wrong with the simple act of voting.

Why are electronic-voting machines sacrosanct?

[april]

7. in other counties it will be the Bush or BS as well

[barbtries]

8. i'm not sure i would survive

a rerun of 2000.

fucking republicans.

[Scuba]

9. Paper ballots, hand counted, in public, cameras rolling, thank you.

[hrmjustin]

11. Are hand counted ballots more accurate? I thought they would.

[hay rick]

12. They are verifiable.

They can be examined and recounted if necessary. They are not perfect but it would be difficult to commit massive fraud with hand-counted paper ballots. Vote-flipping software is another story.