Voting machines are so smart/dumb they reject ballots because of one dot

[kpete]

Voting machines are so smart/dumb they reject ballots because of one dot
The Mobile Press-Register reports: A printing mistake on some Mobile County ballots in Tuesday's election caused electronic voting machines to reject them -- forcing poll workers to count roughly 3,000 ballots by hand into the early morning hours, Probate Court officials said today.

"This little white dot," said Probate Judge Don Davis, pointing to a white, donut-shaped mark barely one-tenth of an inch wide.

The tiny error, though, ended up in an important spot, on the security markings that let the electronic machines know whether to count it. The markings look like a bar code stretching along the side of the ballot.

The faulty marks appeared only on Republican primary ballots for precincts within the contested Mobile County Commission District 3. Not all of the District 3 ballots were affected, officials said. -- Read the whole story (and see a picture of the dot) --> Mobile County ballot problems caused by tiny printing error | al.com
Posted by Ed on March 15, 2012 8:59 AM | Permalink

http://www.votelaw.com/blog/archives/006677.html

[frazzled]

1. The good news is ...

you CAN count them by hand. Nothing is lost.

As for rejecting ballots when an individual voter goofs up, that's fairly good news, too. Because the voter is right there, and when the machine spits it back out they just hand you a new ballot.

Happened to me once, on an endlessly long ballot for judges, where I must've filled in the bubble twice in one judicial race instead of once each for two contiguous ones. I had to start all over again, but at least it caught my error and my ballot was counted in the end. This is better than any system in which you never know if your ballot was rejected for an overvote or other error.

[EC]

2. Why would they need security markings to tell the machines

rather to count the ballot or not? Aren't all ballots supposed to be read and counted? Maybe this was how the vote got skewed in so many states?