Elections board to use computers to watch polls (OH)

[OhioChick]

Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Joan Mazzolini
Plain Dealer Reporter

Cuyahoga County elections officials didn't know for hours on May 2 that the Garden Valley Neighborhood polling place hadn't opened.

A Garden Valley poll worker phoned in at 9:10 a.m. and at least twice more because long lines of angry voters stood outside the closed doors, but the messages got lost in the sea of frantic calls from other polling places with big problems. Garden Valley finally opened about 1 p.m., more than six hours late.

On Tuesday, officials hope to avoid such surprises. They have come up with a system to make sure they find out about any polling place glitches within minutes. If the system works, few voters should encounter the kinds of difficulties they faced in the May primary.

The heart of the system is a third-floor room at the offices of the county Board of Elections, where workers this week are installing 12 computer screens. Come 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, a dozen workers will take seats in front of the screens to keep track of what's going on at 600 polling places across the county. Each worker will track about 50 places.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1162374001275390.xml&coll=2

[Doremus]

1. A step in the right direction.

If it works.

Wouldn't need to have fancy expensive backup systems for fancy expensive voting machines if they'd give us a pad of paper and some pencils. No profit in it though.

[SoCalDem]

2. There's that word again... GLITCH

It's not a "glitch" when a polling station opens 6 hours late..