ELECTION DAY: ELECTRONIC VOTING 'PROTOCOL BREACH' DENIES SCHWARZENEGGER AT

Due to a problem with Electronic Voting Machines in Los Angeles County, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was told he had already voted when he showed up at the polls today to cast his ballot in the Special Election that he himself declared for California today!

He was told he'd have to use a provisional ballot, but unlike most American voters, he was eventually allowed to use a regular ballot anyway.

Los Angeles County Registrar, Conny McCormack (a huge fan of Diebold machines, and a very good friend of their sales rep here in Southern California) is trying to mitigate the damage...big time...Though she admits that someone "breached protocol in advance of the election"

It should be further noted, that the Governator was attempting to vote in Brentwood (in Los Angeles County), but the "breach" -- which would have kept a normal non-Gubernatorial citizen from voting on anything but a provisional ballot -- occurred in Pasadena, about a 30 to 45 minute drive from Brentwood. Early voting, on paperless Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machines, has been occurring in Los Angles County for the last several weeks.http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001990.htm

Of all the people in the State of Ca, there had to be a problem with the GOVERNOR'S vote!!!!!

I LOVE IT!

Perhaps we can turn that event into us investigating WHY this sort of thing happens to help get these voting machine companies/processes cleaned up for good!

Certainly there wasn't ANYTHING else we voted FOR that was passed that was good in this election that would lead to constructive change otherwise. We are only cheering what we voted down that would have been destructive change. 79 and 80 still didn't pass, and we here in San Diego voted in Rethugs for mayor and City Council.

Why make an exception for the Gov? If a voter showed up at my polling location on Tuesday and there was an "AV ISSUED" or "AV" or "TS" in the signature box next to their name and they had no AV ballot to surrender, we had them vote provisional, because that is the procedure. This is to prevent people from voting twice. People show up and say that their AV ballot never came, which I am sure is correct since mine was sent to an old address despite my having reregistered in a timely manner relative to the special election after I moved. Luckily I know the people at my old address. Otherwise I would have voted provisionally at the polling place I worked at.

If they "investigated" further and found out he didn't really vote already I should say: that's tough. Because everyone should be afforded an EQUAL opportunity to vote regularly. Nobody else had an "extra effort" put in to determine their eligibility to vote regularly, so what they did for the Gov. was really unfair.

In the interests of full disclosure I should mention that at some polling locations this time around, they had a person with a laptop who could look up a voter and determine whether they were registered at that polling location or some other polling location. They used data that was more up-to-date than the roster with the first and second sets of supplementary pages added. But this just tells the voter where to go vote. It doesn't tell them whether they have voted already or not. In addition, sometimes it was discovered that the individual needing to look themselves up found that they REALLY WERE registered at my polling location but that their name just hadn't made it into the roster. (To me it is inexusable that all these people didn't make it onto the second supplementary list but...whatever) Guess what these people had to do? You guessed it VOTE PROVISIONAL. Instructions in that case were to have the voter vote provisionally. Such a voter is a bit more assured that their vote will count obviously because an official record that they are registered has already been found, so when they are looked up again on the basis of the pink envelope information they will hopefully be found again. However, they did not get the opportunity to vote REGULARLY. The Gov. shouldn't have had it either.