If Blackwell, the Secretary of State and GOP candidate for governor, had anything to do with them it should not come as much of a surprise. Next we're probably going to hear that he's somehow financially connected to the contractors responsible for correcting the machine problems. How many people have to be disenfranchised before the government actually gives a damn?
Election officials had trouble printing ballot receipts, finding lost votes and tabulating election results in Tuesday's primary. Some election workers were late or did not show up at all in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County, the state's largest. Others could not figure out how to turn on the machines.
The worst problems in Ohio appeared to be in Cuyahoga County, where officials resorted to paper ballots after touch-screen machines failed and about 17,000 absentee ballots were being hand-counted.
David Bear, spokesman for Diebold Inc. [one of Blackwell's investments], which supplied Cuyahoga's machines, said ovals on the ballots printed by the county did not line up properly for optical-scan machines to read them.
Link, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the problems went far beyond minor snags that could be expected, including complaints that voters were sent away by poll workers who were perplexed by the machines. In those cases, voters should have been offered paper ballots.
