(the small text says: There was an error while printing)Trouble voting
Today (April 7, 2009) when I was voting, I used the ES&S AutoMark to mark my ballot. Here in Madison, WI we use a classic ballot with arrows that the voter completes next to the name of the person they would like to vote for. To aid people who have trouble reading or marking the ballots, my local poling place also has a machine that scans in your ballot, presents the candidates on the screen, using a touch screen. I like the idea of these machines because the machines will check your ballot for you before it is cast (warning you if you under or over vote). I’ve tried this machine out twice before. Last time I used the machine it jammed and was unable to read the ballot until it was reset by an election official. This time it incorrectly interpreted the candidate who I was trying to vote for, likely due to a miss calibration of the screen. Every time I tried to click on the second candidate, the first would be selected. I took several videos of me trying to vote to illustrate the point (I took a few more videos than are shown, but it cost me a few bucks each to get them from my phone to computer, so I didn’t bother posting them here).
PLEASE NOTE: I was not necessarily trying to vote for the second candidate in every race, I just made the videos of that to illustrate my point. After making the video I changed the votes to who I was trying to vote for (I was able to vote for them by clicking below their name to compensate for the screen calibration error).
If you can't see the videos, I added them to youtube here and here.
After voting, a confirmation screen appears that confirms who you were voting for, this confirmation screen correctly displayed my votes. Unfortunately, when I tried to print the ballot, the printer broke, and was unable. In the end I had to vote with a pen, the old fashion way.
(the small text says: There was an error while printing)
I told the election official about the poor calibration, (he had to come over when the printer didn’t work). Additionally, I called the city clerk to let them know. They told me that this was normal behavior, and was just a calibration issue.
Just to be clear, I don’t think there is anything malicious going on here. My local poling place workers are great (District 19 shout out). I think it is a combination of poor hardware design, and poor calibration causing this problem. People who use crappy ATM machines are aware of this problem, but I feel it is not acceptable in this situation.
UPDATE: The Bill Lueders of the Isthmus did a nice writeup about my voting troubles Here.
feel free to contact me if you have any questions, or you want to see the other video clips or have questions.