Early voting problems in 2 counties in Ga., Tenn.; 1 county has to hand-count absentee ballots

[Nambe]

Source: By Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) _ Elections officials were untangling early voting glitches in at least two states Friday after a Tennessee county reported some voters had gotten ballots for the wrong district and an Atlanta-area county discovered problems with some of its absentee ballots.

In Georgia, Gwinnett County Elections Superintendent Lynn Ledford told the Gwinnett Daily Post that ovals where voters mark their choices are too thick for optical scanning machines to read. She said officials discovered the problem after a routine test last week.

The county has reprinted 19,000 ballots to fix the problem and is mailing the corrected ones for new requests.

At least 10,000 absentee ballots that have been returned will have to be hand-counted, Ledford said. Members of each political party will monitor the vote transfer and the county will keep copies of both the old and new ballots. ...

Read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-early-voting-problems,0,5507863.story

[LisaM]

1. Oh no! They have to count them BY HAND?

This is terrible news.........FOR THE REPUBLICANS.....since hand-counting is, in the long run, the most accurate method.

[onehandle]

2. They are mailing them in Georgia? That means they will Never be counted.

At the polls, we are 100% Diebold.

Diebold picks our "winners."

[clear eye]

3. That's why I winced when a got an email from an NGO

touting how Jim Martin is catching up to Chambliss. I know that until the U.S. gets real election reform, Georgia is a lost cause. What they did to Max Cleland was an outrage outstanding even from the usual horrors.

[ohio2007]

10. US Postal Workers Union around the country back Obama. The mail will be delivered

[colonel odis]

4. gwinnett used to be overwhelmingly republican. don't know about these days, though.

so maybe it will be to martin's benefit.

[spotbird]

5. GWINNETT COUNTY: Workers to copy flawed ballots

Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution

Several hundred elections workers in Gwinnett will be sequestered in a warehouse on Election Day to transfer votes from 10,000 flawed absentee ballots onto correct ballots that can be read by a machine.

The whole process will come under scrutiny from representatives of political parties, a member of the Secretary of State’s Office of Inspector General, two sheriff’s deputies, as well as other possible observers.

The task is necessary because Gwinnett County sent out 19,700 flawed absentee ballots that cannot be read by an optical scanning machine.

State law requires that absentee ballots be scanned by a machine.

The original ballots, designed to be filled out by hand, are flawed because of a printing error.

Gwinnett will have to transfer all the votes —- by hand —- onto the new corrected ballots.


Read more: http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/10/25/gwinballots.html

[ret5hd]

6. Does sequestered mean "behind closed doors"?

[kenny blankenship]

7. Straight out, blatant, broad daylight election fraud

[VeraAgnes]

9. I do believe it is the story of Election 2000 re-visited

but with a different jacket cover.

[Whoa_Nelly]

8. Then, they need to return the flawed ballots to those who voted absentee

along with a copy of the transferred NEW ballot.

Those voters have the right to know that their votes were cast as originally intended.

[ohio2007]

11. what if the return address doesn't exist ?

I will play devils advocate as opposed to Nov 5th
wednesday morning armchair quarterback.