Editorial - We Deserve Better  (AR)

The Daily Citizen   22 May 2008

It’s not easy being a voter these days. The closure of rural voting sites, newfangled election devices, growing voter apathy and other factors can cause the public as a whole to wonder if casting a ballot is even worth the hassle.

As if that’s not enough of a reason to discourage voters, now comes news of the complete disaster that was the May Primary election in White County Tuesday night.

It seems our local election commission ped the ball and didn’t ensure an accurate configuration of the time of day for voting machines used across White County.

We’re told that dang ol’ Daylight Saving Time threw a monkey wrench into the plans when it came time to boot up the machines Tuesday morning.

The result of all this? The machines wouldn’t shut down at 7:30 p.m. because their inner clocks told them another hour needed to pass before it was time to tabulate. In Union Township, dust had to be knocked off paper ballots because of additional voting machine errors. Workers at the various polling sites across the county weren’t sure what to do and tabulation was delayed by hours. By the time the dust had settled, no White County election results were available until after 1 a.m.

According to our reporter on the scene at the courthouse, nobody would initially own up to what exactly the problem was, which caused even greater confusion. Ever heard of a chicken with its head cut off?

This left candidates and their supporters in a lurch, with some of them trudging back home from the courthouse with no idea as to the outcome of their races. For us at The Daily Citizen, the absolute worst outcome occurred. We reluctantly had to print a newspaper without election results because our deadline had passed and then we had to try and explain to our readers why we failed them — no one wants to hear it’s someone else’s fault even if that’s actually the case.

Good grief. This is supposed to be the United States of America, folks, not Zimbabwe. If we can’t trust government agencies to accurately process our vote, then whom can we trust?

Preliminary vote totals suggest turnout for Tuesday’s primary election may have been the lowest for any primary in state history, Secretary of State Charlie Daniels said Wednesday. This episode in our backyard Tuesday can do nothing but cause more voter apprehension and apathy.

In our view, this election debacle serves as the straw that broke the voters’ backs. The voting machines were introduced some two years ago as the dawn of a new era. We were assured that the confusion of hanging chads, incomplete pencil marks and such would be eliminated — that the machines would make both the voting and tabulation processes faster and more efficient.

What we’ve seen so far leaves us exceptionally unimpressed. And angry. We can’t help but wonder if the ineptness of this particular election process will cause losing candidates to question the accuracy of the results. They could certainly make a case.

We have a joke in the newsroom whenever our computer equipment goes on the fritz. We call it operator error, a jab that the ignorant human controlling the device is the most at fault.

There’s really no other explanation for the election machine catastrophe that occurred Tuesday night. Election officials are appointed and entrusted to ensure an accurate and efficient voting process. That didn’t happen and we expect personal accountability on this matter after White County was transformed into a third-world country Tuesday night.

Our voters — or at least the ones who showed up to fulfill their civic duty — deserve better.