Mighty suspicious, given that they’ve known about this problem since last week, but still can’t fix it.
Some Voting Machines Chop Off Candidates’ Names – washingtonpost.com
U.S. Senate candidate James Webb’s last name has been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville because of a computer glitch that also affects other candidates with long names, city officials said yesterday.
…
Thus, Democratic candidate Webb will appear with his first name and nickname only — or “James H. ‘Jim’ ” — on summary pages in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, the only jurisdictions in Virginia that use balloting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic of Austin.
Although the problem creates some voter confusion, it will not cause votes to be cast incorrectly, election officials emphasized. The error shows up only on the summary page, where voters are asked to review their selections before hitting the button to cast their votes. Webb’s full name appears on the page where voters choose for whom to vote.
If the summary page has no value, they wouldn’t use it. Consequently, I can’t see on what grounds anyone could say this is an irrelevant error. (I will agree it’s not as bad as messing up the actual voting page, but even so…)
Couldn’t they shelve the machines and use paper ballots?
