Wednesday, December 24, 2008
By Deborah M. Todd, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Voting discrepancies at one Wilkinsburg polling place are being used by voters' rights organizations to argue that the state needs a better system of ballot verification.
Richard King, of VotePA, wrote a letter to the Allegheny County Elections Bureau last month requesting an investigation into Wilkinsburg's Ward 1, District 6 election returns after he learned the number of votes cast in that district exceeded the number of voters who signed in to access the machines by 10 votes.
Mr. King said he reviewed the total tapes from the district himself and found that 591 voters signed in and 601 votes were cast.
Mark Wolosik, elections bureau division manager, cited machine malfunctions and human error as the likely reasons for the discrepancy.
He said the local board of elections did not follow proper procedure in activating voting machines that were compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and some board members admitted they may have erred in recording the names of voters.
Mr. King said the problem of "phantom ballots" is not uncommon with the new voter verified machines and voters should be able to verify their own votes with a paper copy of the ballot they cast.
"If you ask the division of elections how prevalent discrepancies are between ballots cast and voters voting on the machine, you won't be able to get an answer because they said they don't keep that record," he said.
Celeste Taylor, of the Black Political Empowerment Project and PA Voice, said the county should do a better job of training election workers to avoid errors, particularly in regard to ADA-compliant machines.
"They didn't train them properly," she said. "The Help America Vote Act was set in 2002 to do just that.
"In 2004, there were a lot of blind voters that were disenfranchised. Also, when they go to vote and are treated like second-class citizens, we know what that's like."
Mr. Wolosik said no voters were turned away due to machine malfunctions. He also said the total number of votes cast for the precinct does not exceed the number of people admitted to voting machines, so there was no error in the actual number of votes tabulated, even if there was an error in the number of voters recorded by poll workers.
Ms. Taylor, who is a lead plaintiff on a lawsuit challenging the state's use of ES&S IVotronic and M650 central count scanners to record votes, said the machine error wasn't so much the issue as was providing transparency to voters.
"It doesn't matter if it's not the machine," she said. "Our goal at the end of the day is to make sure voters aren't disenfranchised."
Deborah M. Todd can be reached at dtodd@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1652.
First published on December 24, 2008 at 5:59 am
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08359/937272-56.stm
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