Spider in (aging) voting machine entangles Massachusetts town election

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Globalpost

An itsy bitsy spider is to blame for jamming up a voting machine in Massachusetts on Election Day.

Rehoboth Town Clerk Kathleen Conti called a technician after one of the town's aging voting machines malfunctioned during Tuesday's election, The Associated Press reported.

The machine stopped recognizing ballots, which threatened to delay voting results.

Staff counted more than 800 votes by hand until the technician arrived and discovered that the eight-legged culprit's web had blocked a sensor in the machine, according to the Boston Globe.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/news/regions/americas/united-states/spider-in-voting-machine-rehoboth-massachusetts

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A spider is responsible for jamming up the voting machine in a small Massachusetts town, forcing staff to count ballots by hand. (Prakesh Mathema/AFP/Getty Images)

[Gargoyle22]

1. Gotta love MA*

[Warpy]

2. My cruddy little town on Cape Cod used paper ballots, publicly counted

It was a little slice of heaven to me.

[Bette Noir]

3. That IS why they call it "a bug in the system."

[Phillip McCleod]

9. beat me to it!

[sakabatou]

12. Yep, all the way back to the Harvard Mark II

[BouzoukiKing]

4. Heh. Ask Admiral Grace Hopper...

...about that one.

[littlemissmartypants]

5. Sir Walter Scott said:

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

[Ian David]

6. See, we need to replace those old machines with electronic Diebold machines! n/t

[millijac]

7. It was not a voting machine

I work the polls. It was a scanner. MA uses paper ballots, counted by optical scanning. And our legislature just passed a bill this summer that will soon allow for audits of the machines.

This sort of misinformed reporting just pisses me off though.

[Phillip McCleod]

8. the machine had a bug

thats where the term came from originally - back when computers used relays and tubes

[LiberalEsto]

10. Was the spider one of KKKarlRove's trained minions?

Perhaps even a relative?

[AsahinaKimi]

11. JUST IMAGINE what havoc could have played out had it been a RADIO ACTIVE SPIDER!!

[sakabatou]

13. Paint it green with an unhappy face, take away the arms...

and he'll be a creeper from Minecraft:

[AsahinaKimi]

14. hehe

[sakabatou]

15. Even funnier