Reply #1: E-voting is a serious concern, but everyone should review their ballot

[sonias]

And believe me, many of us have been working the bbv issue with our local registrar for a long time. Not that we got through to her completely. She still insists we have safe electronic voting. The one good thing we can at least say about our system, is that it isn't Diebold. That said however, we know Hart Intercivic E-Slate can still be hacked. All of these systems can. We are not satisfied with where we stand on safe e-voting. We want verifiable paper ballots.

Now on the issue of voting mistakes - We do not want the vote suppressed due to the belief that these systems are unsafe. (even if they are) That's not the answer this election. We still need to vote. This error may end up helping us in the end (next year) in getting printers.


The Travis Dem party sent out this message
It has come to the attention of the Travis County Democratic Party and to the attention of Dana DeBeauvoir, our Travis County Clerk, that an e-mail is circulating stating that a Travis County voter cast a straight Democratic ballot and when proofing their ballot, saw a vote marked for Bush.

To dispel the rumor: This appeared to have happened and was corrected before the ballot was cast. This was not a machine malfunction.
However, user-error can cause ballot casting errors.

The TCDP has been working closely with Travis County Elections Division and here are some facts:

-- As of Thursday evening, over 63,000 had placed their vote in Travis
County
-- This total will more than likely exceed 75,000 by Friday night
-- Travis County Elections Division has received only a handful of problems/complaints and after thoroughly checking into each one, have determined that these resulted from user-error and were not machine problems.

The County held a voting machine demonstration with the press earlier today. We have complete faith in their system in that this has been an isolated case or two and is not some sort of conspiracy as is being indicated by the e-mail.

As conscientious voters, I am sure you did or will thoroughly review your ballot before hitting the 'cast' button. If you have any questions while placing your vote, please do not hesitate to let the Election Judge on duty know BEFORE hitting the send button.

*** What happened in the case stated in the e-mail was voter error and not a machine malfunction. ***

When pressing ENTER after marking Straight Democrat, some voters inadvertently turned the SELECT wheel one click through the ballot while meaning to go to the final "PROOF" page. If you hit ENTER at that point, your cursor is over the first candidate on the ballot: Bush/Cheney.

So, the answer to this problem is this:
TELL EVERYONE TO PROOF THEIR BALLOT. If there is an error, page back and fix it and/or ask for assistance in doing so. You must fix these things BEFORE you hit CAST BALLOT.

We thank everyone who has written or called in with their concerns. We understand these concerns considering what happened in Florida in 2000. But here in Travis County, Texas in 2004 there is nothing to worry about.
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Sonia