New voting machines in Lucas county, OH cause late start

New voting machines cause late starts at some precincts

Five long statewide ballot issues confused some voters in an off-year election with light turnout and a few glitches from the use of new voting machines in about half of Ohio’s 88 counties. The transition to new electronic voting machines, mostly touch screens, went better as the day wore on, election officials said. Early this morning, a handful of people left precincts in northwest Ohio without voting because machines weren’t running when polls opened. A few polling places opened late.

At six precincts in Toledo, poll workers misplaced master cards, credit card-style cards that the worker must insert to authorize the machine to turn on, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. A handful of voters said they couldn’t wait.

Lucas County Elections Director Jill Kelly said the poll workers didn’t offer paper ballots right away. “Some people just kind of froze,” she said. “We don’t want even one person to be disenfranchised. We’re apologizing profusely and begging people to come back to the polls.”

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Poll workers at the Sylvania Senior Center could not find the machine’s memory cards and at the Toledo Board of Education building the voting machines could not be found. Those issues were resolved, Ms. Kelly said. And those coming to vote where machines were not yet up and running were given provisional ballots. She denied reports that voters in some precincts were given the wrong ballot issues to consider. She added that as of about 9 a.m., the calls from the 495 precincts died down significantly.

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http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051108/ELECTION2005/51106008

(This is in Toledo, where the mayoral race is between two Dems, LOL)

thanks for reporting