Image by Josh Hallett , who tells BoingBoing, "I took the photo before the polls opened, hence the 0 (zero) count on the display. I served as a precinct clerk in Florida and we had no issues with our equipment." (via 27Bstroke6)
Much information pouring out on the topic from many sources, in many precincts. I'll try to update this post as much as possible with pointers our readers send in.
Here are a few: BB reader Glyn says,
In New Jersey, a problem cropped up when the name of Democratic Senator Robert Menendez was automatically highlighted on some machines. That caused some two dozen voters to complain that the only way to de-select it was to press it again, which Republican Party officials said led to some people inadvertently voting for Menendez. Officials notified state authorities about the issue, suspecting a serious computer malfunction or an attempt to manipulate the vote. Link.
Josh Smith says,
In the Maryland area one of the voting area received their voting machines minus the power cords so voters are only able to vote on the battery power which is limited. Link.
Snip from NYT article "At Polls, Scattered Reports of Technical Bugs," Link:
Poll workers in Pittsburgh and parts of surrounding Allegheny County had trouble starting electronic machines today. Problems with printers and malfunctioning computers also cropped up, preventing at least some people from voting at 13 polling sites.
But no similar cluster of problems was reported elsewhere in Pennsylvania, so Barry Kaufmann, executive director of Common Cause/Pennsylvania, a voting rights group, said, "It sounds like there's either not adequate training going on, or, in the worst-case scenario, a bad batch of computers."
And 27Bstroke6 blog has an extensive post here: Link. Snip:
Columbus, Ohio's voting machines were so bad, they managed also to take down the county's phone system under the crush of calls that resulted.
Denver has wait times of up to two hours to vote, thanks to machines that are down and new voter identification rules.
Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt couldn't get her ballot read by the optical scanner, while in the infamous Cuyahoga County, the AP reports that at least one voter says he was purged from the voting rolls, despite voting in the primaries.
MSNBC has the best roundup so far, but this is a story happening in every precinct in the country so it's hard to know exactly what's happening.
See also this related Slashdot thread: Link.
