Ballot glitch a mystery  (MA)

Steve Urbon  South Coast Today    10 September 2008

NEW BEDFORD — One week before the state primary, city Elections Commissioner Maria Tomasia said her office is trying to solve the puzzle of why the Automark voting machines won't work with the city's Republican ballots.

She said technicians from ES&S have about 48 hours to get the machines set up properly, and that the problem "seems to be the ink," but that nobody is certain.

Brian McNiff, spokesman for the state Elections Division, said the problem is confined to New Bedford, with no other communities reporting difficulty. "The manufacturer is working with the city, and this is the only instance of difficulty with the ballots," he said. "But it is a good example of why we urge cities and towns to test machines before voting day.

"We're working with New Bedford to get the machines to operate properly."

Ms. Tomasia said the matter is especially odd because all of the ballots are printed by the same contractor, yet only the Republican ballots are having trouble. Automark machines were introduced in recent years to assist the handicapped and vision-impaired to read and mark their election ballots.

Installed at every precinct, they are not vote counters, but rather a sort of printer into which a standard ballot is ed, and the voter then reads options and makes commands on a touch screen or with a toggle control.

The Automark then prints out the paper ballot and it can be checked by the voter before it is machine-counted along with all of the other ballots that are filled out manually by voters.