Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

"...my vote didn't register in the optical scanner so I might as well have not gone...."

Am I the only one who is left hanging by this? Do they scan your ballot in front of you at the time of voting? In that case, isn't there a backup procedure for votes that don't scan? What happens to write-in candidates? Are there any figures on similar incidents yesterday? How close was the vote?
Sorry, but after Florida, Ohio, and Washington state, and the privileges granted Diebold, such terseness begs all kinds of questions.

It's an optical scanner with an LED read-out of the number of votes scanned. Since the number didn't advance when I fed mine in, the local officials say that it didn't scan my choices. But they also assured me that I hadn't seen what I'd seen with my own eyes. They said that if there was indeed a discrepancy in the manual count of the number of ballots and what the counter said (which they doubted), a report would be filed, but the ballots would not be hand-tallied. I.e., my vote would be for naught.

It was not a particularly close election.

Thank you. I wonder if those officials knew what they were talking about -- surely there must be provisions for a recount, in which just those sorts of eventualities have to be considered. In any case, they must be thanking their lucky stars that one was not necessary. Apparently.