Glitch to keep polls open until 9 p.m.
1 in 5 paper-ballot machines malfunction, causing delays.
By Jane Holahan, Anya Litvak And Ryan Robinson
Published Nov 07, 2006 14:31
But in today’s general election, things didn’t work quite so smoothly.
As of 10:30 this morning, 57 out of the county’s 275 eScan machines — the “paper ballot” machines — were malfunctioning. That’s about 21 percent. The machines are in polling places throughout the county.
As a result, county officials decided by late morning to keep all the county’s 232 polling places open until 9 p.m.
The problem was twofold, according to Mary Stehman, the head of the county election bureau.
About 50 percent of the machines were in test mode and needed to be changed. The remainder of the problems were attributed to human error, including machines that jammed when paper receipts weren’t torn off properly.
The eSlate machines seemed to be trouble free.
But Stehman and county commissioners Pete Shaub and Dick Shellenberger all said that voters shouldn’t worry because no votes will be lost and all votes will be counted.
“Everybody is still able to vote,” said Shaub at mid morning. “The votes will be scanned and put into a special, secure slot in the machine. Then they will be scanned as the machines are fixed.”
A judge of elections and representatives from both parties will be present when the votes are scanned at each of the locations.
“Your vote will be counted and nobody should be turned away from voting,” emphasized Shellenberger. “All of our crews are out correcting the problems. It might take all day, but it’s not delaying lines.”
That wasn’t the case early this morning for some.
It took Helen Duncan 25 minutes to vote because of a problem with an eScan machine at the Franklin & Marshall College Alumni Sports and Fitness Center.
The judge of elections at that polling place, Judith Smith, said she called for help and was told to turn the machine off and back on.
She had to do it twice, but that fixed the problem, she said.
Les Turner, the judge of elections at the polling place inside the Lancaster County Courthouse, said two voters had trouble with an eScan machine. The difficulty backed up voters for about 20 minutes.
Another voter at the site did not insert her ballot correctly, and so she had a problem, Turner said.
She eventually left, possibly to return to try and vote again later, he said.
Turner said he decided after that incident to have the receipts on the ballots torn off before they were inserted for scanning.
That seemed to work better, he said.
Sandy Gingrich, of Race Avenue in Lancaster Township, said she was told the scanning machine was broken at her polling place, First Assembly of God Church, on Columbia Avenue.
She was instructed to put her ballot into the slot on the side of the machine to be scanned later.
“It kind of made you feel weird, like being in another country,” Gingrich said. “And here we’ve got all this technology.”
(Staff writer Bernard Harris contributed to this report).
CONTACT US: jholahan@LNPnews.com or 481-6016
