E-VOTE MACHINES CAN'T EVEN PRINT RIGHT

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

JOE GUILLEN, CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER - A recount after next year's
presidential election could mean disaster for Cuyahoga County based on
problems discovered with paper records produced by electronic voting
machines. More than 20 percent of the printouts from touch-screen voting
machines were unreadable and had to be reprinted. Board of Elections
workers found the damaged ballots when they conducted a recount of two
races, which involved only 17 of the county's 1,436 precincts. The
recount lasted more than 12 hours. Reprinting the damaged records and
hand-counting them created an extra step that added hours.

"If it is as close as it's been for the last two presidential elections
and it's that close again in 2008, God help us if we have to depend on
Cuyahoga County as the deciding factor with regard to making the
decision on who the next president of the United States is," said County
Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, a longtime opponent of the county's
touch-screen voting system.

Board of Elections Director Jane Platten said recounting the entire
county for the 2008 presidential election could take more than a week.

"The high number of paper audit trails that need to be reprinted was at
best a difficult task to have to work through," Platten said. "I think
that's going to be an indication of future recounts."

Tuesday's recounts were for a North Royalton City Council seat and
positions on the Bedford Heights Charter Review Commission. The recount
upheld the official results that showed Dan Kasaris won the North
Royalton race. Results were not available Tuesday night for the Bedford
Heights election.

Cuyahoga County uses touch-screen voting machines that store votes on a
memory card inside each machine. On Election Day, a paper record of each
ballot is printed inside each machine on long reels of paper.

The printout is the paper trail used during recounts. If it's damaged
and unreadable -- usually because the paper jammed when printing -- a
new copy is printed from the machine's memory card.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/
cuyahoga/119624295790400.xml&coll=2


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||