To the Editor:
I was prompted to write because of a comment from Bucks County Commissioner
Charley Martin about a lighting issue affecting visibility in the voting machines that was resolved at one of the polling
stations this week. Martin said, “If that's the worst thing that happens today, we'll have a good election.”
Perhaps Commissioner Martin was not in touch with the Board of Elections,
but as judge of elections at Doylestown's Salem United Church, I certainly was. After calling the emergency phone number for instruction, and
several attempts at starting one of our two machines that was displaying an error message, we had to open our polling station
at 7 a.m. with only one machine in operation. We asked for someone to come out and repair the machine, and
two gentlemen were there in short order. Their first attempt to restart the machine was not successful, but after they took
off the front/keypad portion of the machine and did some magic with the printer in the back, we were up and running.
Thank you to the voters who arrived early to vote and patiently waited in line until things were really moving along
after 7:30.
Then there was the woman who told us that as she was pushing buttons
to vote for delegates, the red light indicating she had chosen another candidate would blink off. No one on the staff could
be sure what, if anything, was wrong with the machine. The woman left seeming unsure of whether the machine had registered
her vote, and I have to say, this was one of those times I really wished the voter could have seen a paper record of her intended
vote.
The worst machine moment of the day occurred when a young man came in
to vote, I believe for the first time. I was called over by the machine inspector because there was some confusion over whether
the red lights indicating that the machine is ready to register votes had ever come on. The young man was certain that he
had not pushed the green “VOTE” button, which should be the only reason all the lights would go off. Again, there
was no paper record to show whether he had voted.
After another call to the Board of Elections for direction, we asked
the man to wait while the staff checked the paperwork for the total number of registered voters who had signed in. Then we
looked on the back of the machines for the readout of the number of people who had voted on each machine and added the two
together. We had one more voter on the sign-in paperwork than we had recorded votes on the machines, leaving us one voter
short, so we allowed the young man back into the voting booth for another voting attempt. I'm sure the whole experience was
frustrating and embarrassing for the voter, and I hope he will not be discouraged from participating in the election process
in the future.
We had no problems whatsoever with the people at the Board of Elections.
But the Board of Elections cannot overcome the issues and concerns raised over the use of the voting machines we now use in
our polling places, and I'm sure their hectic day would have been made much simpler if a paper record of each vote had been
available to the voters.
So, no, Commissioner Martin, bad lighting was not the worst thing to
happen at the polls on Election Day.
Mary K. Bingler
Doylestown
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/320-04262008-1525206.html
