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More Electronic Voting Machine Woes

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Elections

U.S. Senate candidate James Webb’s last name has been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville because of a computer glitch that also affects other candidates with long names, city officials said yesterday.

Although the problem creates some voter confusion, it will not cause votes to be cast incorrectly, election officials emphasized. The error shows up only on the summary page, where voters are asked to review their selections before hitting the button to cast their votes. Webb’s full name appears on the page where voters choose for whom to vote.

Election officials attribute the mistake to an increase in the type size on the ballot. Although the larger type is easier to read, it also unintentionally shortens the longer names on the summary page of the ballot.

Thus, Democratic candidate Webb will appear with his first name and nickname only — or “James H. ‘Jim’ ” — on summary pages in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, the only jurisdictions in Virginia that use balloting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic of Austin.

Good times…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “More Electronic Voting Machine Woes”

Sean Aqui Says:
October 24th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
James Webb is a long name?
Kevin Says:
October 25th, 2006 at 7:45 am
I’m trying not to be a tinfoil hat guy on this one but this glitch seems to favor George Allen an aweful lot.
gal Says:
October 25th, 2006 at 8:00 am
Yes, isn’t that conveeenient.
BrianOfAtlanta Says:
October 25th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
How does this favor Allen? If the summary confuses a Webb voter, won’t they just vote for Webb again? If they don’t notice the mistake, then they’ve still voted for Webb. The only way this could hurt Webb is if someone gets to the summary screen, is confused that Webb doesn’t show up, and then decides to vote for Allen instead. Which they could do even if the summary screen didn’t have a glitch.

It’s a pretty damning report on the Virginia Board of Elections, though. These are the people we’re trusting to know if their machines have been compromised?
sleipner Says:
October 25th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Almost as bad as the crap Blackwell’s trying to pull in Ohio…again!!!

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