December 05, 2007 Goshen, NY – Votes cast in yesterday’s $70 million school construction proposition cannot be recovered, leaving the outcome of the election permanently out of reach. School board members are due to meet with Superintendent Roy Reese to determine their next move. After consulting with the manufacturer of the voting machines, officials learned there was no way to recover the results. The machines only display results up to three digits, but the turnout was far greater than that. Once the counter turned past 999, there was no accurate way to account for the vote, officials said. On each machine there were more than 1,000 votes cast but it was unclear for which side. There were 2,656 votes cast, not including 86 absentee ballots. One machine reads 314 yes and 24 no and the other machine reads 309 yes and 10 no.
What happened to over site and testing? New York still has not certified any vendor's systems for the 2008 vote and is looking at major loss of their HAVA monies due to Justice Departments suing for non-compliance to HAVA laws.
What kind of problems did your state have this year?
Update:
The County Board of Elections understands the counter problem, and always makes sure that there are enough machines so that no one machine gets that many voters. However, in this case, the County had loaned the machines to the city, and the officials conducting the city election did not understand the problem. The city only used 2 machines, even though there were 10,000 voters eligible to vote.
Michael H. Drucker
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