The Electronic Voting Machine Glitches Begin - The Board Blog - NYTimes.com
"Voters in West Virginia, which is conducting early voting, are complaining that ES & S voting machines recorded votes for Democratic candidates as votes for Republicans.
Calvin Thomas of Ripley, a retired factory worker, said that when he tried to vote for Barack Obama, it registered the vote for John McCain. He said his daughter had the same problem.
They got an election worker to fix their ballots, but Mr. Thomas said he was worried other voters might not notice the problem.
In Tennessee, the problem seems to be the reverse. At least three voters complained that ES & S voting machines registered their votes for Mr. McCain as votes for Mr. Obama.
“Vote flipping,” as this glitch is known, is an acknowledged problem with electronic voting machines. It’s also pretty scary for anyone who cares about democracy.
West Virginia’s secretary of state asked localities to “recalibrate” their machines, and said the problem was then solved.
We believe the problem will be solved when voting is no longer done on electronic voting machines.
We favor paper ballots, counted by an optical scan reader. And when the paper ballots are counted, if the total is different from what the optical scan reader reports, the paper ballots’ total should be the official election result.
We also encourage voters to pay extra attention if they are voting on electronic machines."
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