A Pa. county's Election Day nightmare underscores voting machine concerns

[yortsed snacilbuper]

EASTON, Pa. — It was a few minutes after the polls closed on Election Day when panic began to spread through the county election offices.

Vote totals in a Northampton County judge’s race showed one candidate, Abe Kassis, a Democrat, had just 164 votes out of 55,000 ballots across more than 100 precincts. Some machines reported zero votes for him. In a county with the ability to vote for a straight-party ticket, one candidate’s zero votes was a near statistical impossibility. Something had gone quite wrong.

Lee Snover, the chairwoman of the county Republicans, said her anxiety began to pick up at 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 5. She had trouble getting someone from the election office on the phone. When she eventually got through, she said: “I’m coming down there and you better let me in.”

With clearly faulty results in at least the judge’s election, officials began counting the paper backup ballots generated by the same machines. The paper ballots showed Mr. Kassis winning narrowly, 26,142-25,137, over his opponent, Republican Victor Scomillio.

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[WhiteTara]

1. Yea for paper ballot backups

republicons can only win when they cheat.

[MH1]

2. " officials began counting the paper backup ballots"

that alone makes it an infinitely better system than the current one in my PA county.

Yeah it sucks that the automatic count wasn't working.

On the other hand, if it fails, we want it to fail obviously, and have paper ballots to count manually.

And with that said, if there are many experiences like this, it might get support for 100% manual count always. Not a bad thing IMO.

[DFW]

3. When the machines are off, they ALWAYS have the Republican winning

Not surprising, given who makes and programs them.

The difficult part is not when the results reported by the machine are UN-believable. Then, it's obvious that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

The problem is when the reported result IS believable--but STILL wrong. THEN who's going to notice and demand action? Not a Republican who just saw her party win a "narrow, surprise upset victory," that's for sure.

Eighteen years of this fraud with the voting machines, and we STILL use them? WTF for????????????????

[JoeOtterbein]

7. +1000!

[triron]

9. Part of the way Trump 'won' Pa.in 2016.

And Fla. and Wisc. and Michigan.

[Karadeniz]

4. What were the 3 repub states that recently ordered brand new, paperless machines?

[yellowdogintexas]

5. In Texas, each county orders their own machines. We just got new ones

We now have 100% paper backup for everything.
I love this new system. My husband and I helped train election judges on the new equipment and we also did some public demonstrations for groups around the area.

Nothing in this system is connected to the internet except the voter registry where we look up the voter and have them sign. It's on a dedicated signal to the cell tower nearest the election office. We are now using specially configured iPads and it is so nice. We scan their drivers license for name and address, the system gives their precinct and ballot form and prints it out as a barcode. Then we scan that barcode to creat the secret access code, they log into the voting part, the ballot comes up on the touch screen. A voter can change things as much as they need to. When they are satisfied, they print their ballot and drop it in the scanner. No information is stored in any of these machines .

[keithbvadu2]

6. Accounting class taught that it is very suspicious when someone does not want an audit. Or audit tr

Accounting class taught that it is very suspicious when someone does not want an audit.

Or audit trail.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. eliminate electronic voting

Paper should be the only method, not the backup that only gets referenced when the failure of electronic "voting" machines is blatant. Voting is more important than checkout at the supermarket.

Voters can't see electrons.

[triron]

10. knr