Officials Find, Fix Glitch in NM Voting Machine - NY Times

[helderheid]

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 7, 2008

Filed at 5:53 a.m. ET

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- A glitch that would have kept votes from being counted in the presidential and other top-of-the-ticket races was discovered during a pre-election check of a voting machine in Santa Fe County, officials said.

The error was found Friday and corrected the same day, said Denise Lamb, who heads the elections bureau in the county clerk's office.

The problem in the coding of the machine's memory card would have prevented the tabulating machine from counting the votes in the presidential, http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/senate/index.html?inline=nyt-org">U.S. Senate and 3rd District congressional races when Democrats or Republicans marked their ballots indicating they wanted to vote a straight ticket.

In New Mexico -- a state where the presidential contest between Democrat http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Barack Obama and Republican http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_mccain/index.html?inline=nyt-per">John McCain could be close -- voters use paper ballots that are inserted into optical scanning machines for counting.

Heavily Democratic Santa Fe County was the only county in which the problem occurred, according to Automated Election Services, which prints ballots, codes memory cards and provides other election assistance to the state and counties.

MORE >>>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Vote-Count-Glitch.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

ETA: Emphasis added by me.

[helderheid]

1. Kick - this is so important - this and vote purging. Be AWARE

[SwampG8r]

2. im kicking it to helderhied we must be aware

[helderheid]

3. thank you very much!

[SwampG8r]

4. its all you baby! does a reply kick it too ?lol

[helderheid]

5. LOL! As a matter of fact...

:P :hi: :yourock:

[AnotherMother4Peace]

6. Here we go again - the cheaters are cheating - election fraud will be the x-factor.

[helderheid]

10. I hope there is an overwhelming turnout that it isn't close enough to steal again

[AnotherMother4Peace]

21. This will have to be one of our strategies - a very big turnout. nt

[SoonerPride]

7. Not suprised, but very saddened.

This is all too common.

[LiberalCommiePinko]

8. We have paper ballots here.

I'm not too concerned about this development.

[helderheid]

15. Where? And why are the places voting on these hideous machines of no concern?

[LiberalCommiePinko]

22. In NM

we use paper ballots which are being run through a machine which tabulates the votes. Since there is a verifiable paper trail for every vote, that is why I am not too concerned about this error which has already been fixed.

[Broken Acorn]

9. Unbelievable

This is the ONLY way these criminals can win in November.

It makes me sick!!!!!

[ailsagirl]

11. "Heavily Democratic Santa Fe County was the only county in which the problem occurred"

This is what scares the hell out of me.

[helderheid]

13. It's deja vu all over again! That jumped right out at me as well.

[ailsagirl]

12. kick

[renate]

14. k&r

[helderheid]

16. k

[helderheid]

17. k

[high density]

18. They should remove the straight ticket option from these machines

Too often this functionality seems to be broken.

[Fly by night]

19. Which other states allow straight-party voting?

We need to alert Obama to be demanding tests/fixes everywhere on this "glitch". Sheesh!!

[helderheid]

20. k

[lisa58]

23. I guess it's good to have Richardson's endorsement.

[Overseas]

24. StealBackYOurVote dot com has the lastest tips

to be as sure as you can that your vote will be counted.

Check your registration.

They say not to vote on provisional ballots. Over a million were tossed out in 2004.

www.stealbackyourvote.com

[Wilms]

25. k&r n/t

[AnotherMother4Peace]

26. kick

[riqster]

27. Vote on Paper, not Plastic!

Note that since the ballots were on paper, it was easy to recount them after the error occurred.

Had the same error occured within a touchscreen device's memory card, the votes would have been unrecoverable.