Another Electronic Voting Screw-Up

It looks like even the tiniest towns are having trouble with the new electronic voting machines. The small town of Waldenburg in Arkansas only has 80 people, but they are the proud owners of an electronic voting machine. They used the electronic machine in the recent election.

You might think it would be hard to screw up an election in a town with only 80 people, but they seem to have done it. In the city's mayoral election, there were three candidates including Randy Wooten. Wooten didn't neccessarily expect to be elected, but he knew he had at least one vote -- his own.

Imagine his surprise then when the vote totals were released. The official total showed each of his opponents had 18 votes and he had none. A runoff has been scheduled, but Wooten wants to know what happened.

Wooten said that his wife "saw my name with zero votes by it. She came home and asked me if I had voted for myself or not. I told her I did." Wooten went on to say, "I had at least eight or nine people who said they voted for me, so something is wrong with this picture. It's just very hard to understand."

Election Commissioner Junaway Payne said that officials are aware of the issue, but no action has been taken. Payne said, "It's our understanding from talking with the secretary of state's office that a court order would have to be obtained in order to open the machine and check the totals."

The more I hear about the electronic voting machines, the more I'm in favor of going back to paper ballots. A correct and verifiable total is much more important than a fast count of the votes.