With two weeks to go before the presidential election, early voting is underway across the nation as voters in many states are able to cast their ballots before Election Day and avoid the long lines expected on Nov. 4.
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Thirty-one states , including California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Texas and West Virginia, allow voters to go to the polls in person before Election Dday to cast their ballots, according to the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore.
Three states, Kentucky, Minnesota and Virginia, plus the District of Columbia, also allow early voting, but require voters to give a reason for why they wouldn’t be able to vote on Election Day .
Among the benefits of early voting are reducing the crush of voters on Nov. 4, when turn out is expected to be high, as well as giving states a chance to double-check their Election Day processes ahead of time.
In at least one of those states, West Virginia, two voters said they had problems with electronic touchscreen voting machines when they cast their ballots on Friday, but the issues were eventually resolved.
Barbara “Bobbi” Oates, a retired West Virginia state Tax Department official from Scott Depot, W.V., and Calvin Thomas, a retired machine operator from Ripley, W.V., said the iVotronic machines they used apparently “switched” their selections from the candidates they chose to the opposing candidates in some of the races, causing them to ask election officials for assistance.
“It did switch my vote,” Oates said. “I corrected it. I touched my [candidate’s name on the ballot screen] and it switched to the candidate in the other party.”
A poll worker showed Oates how to deselect the incorrect candidate and change it to the correct selection, she said, but Oates was worried that other voters might not know to ask about such a problem. “What concerned me is that people are not computer savvy” and wouldn’t know to ask, she said. “I think this election is very crucial and you want the person you voted for to get your vote.”
Thomas, 81, said he also was concerned about how other voters potentially could be affected if they didn’t know to check their candidate selections before finalizing their ballots.
Thomas said he has vision problems, and took his daughter with him in case he need help casting his ballot. “I’ve been a registered Republican all my life,” Thomas said. “This election, I’m voting Democratic. We pushed [Barack] Obama [on the touch screen] and when we pushed Obama, it jumped up to [Republican presidential candidate John} McCain . It did the same for the governor’s race.” The same problem occurred when his daughter voted, Thomas said.
Thomas and his daughter asked election officials for help and were able to correct their selections, he said.
Election officials in both counties said they responded to the reports from Thomas and Oates by checking and recalibrating the e-voting machines at those polling places to be sure they were operating correctly. The machines are calibrated to ensure that the part of the screen where a voter’s fingertip touches is in just the right spot to tally a vote for that candidate.
Jeff Waybright, the clerk of Jackson County, where Thomas cast his ballot, said the machines checked out fine. “I don’t know for sure what happened because I wasn’t there, but all the tests we’ve done” show the devices are working properly, he said.
One thing that can happen, Waybright said, is that a voter can touch the screen, then inadvertently “roll” a finger to another part of the screen, changing the candidate selection without realizing it. “If people touch the [candidate selection] box, then their finger rolls up, it will check the box above the one they chose,” Waybright said.
Out of 622 voters who cast ballots on Friday, he said, only two reported such a problem.
As soon as he heard of Thomas’ problem, Waybright said he went started to investigate. He called Thomas and apologized for the difficulty, he said. “I don’t want anyone to be intimidated by these machines,” he said.
Brian Wood, the clerk in Putnam County, where Oates cast her early ballot, said he also went in to check out the problem and even cast his own early ballot on the same machine to see how the system was working.
“I wanted to make sure that everything was going good,” Wood said. He said the machine operated correctly when he voted, but he also interviewed several other voters about their experiences that day to be sure they weren’t having trouble.
“We do our best to give the public all the information they can possibly get before they go into the booth,” Wood said.
Just over 1,000 people voted early on Friday, Wood said, and Oates was the only one to report a problem.
Wood said he is confident that the machines were working properly.
“I pre-tested it,” he said. “We publicly tested it. We’re constantly going back and testing it. Is it a machine? Do machines sometimes malfunction? Yes, but clerks and voters and poll workers make mistakes, too.”
Wood said he’s concerned that reports about e-voting machines problems will keep some people from coming out to vote because they lack faith in the systems.
“I don’t want people to get discouraged and not go out to vote,” he said. “If they get discouraged … then that’s bad.”
The iVotronic e-voting machines, made by Omaha-based Election Systems & Software, include a paper feed that prints out how a person voted so the voter can confirm the choices. The iVotronic machines are used in all of the West Virginia’s 55 counties.
Pamela Smith , president of San Francisco-based VerifiedVoting.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan election watchdog group, said the problems reported in West Virginia are typically related to the machine’s calibration and can be corrected by careful re-adjustment.
Both voters did the right thing by notifying poll workers, whose responses to the requests for assistance were appropriate, she said. “Voters often think they are doing something wrong and that it’s not the machine,” she said.
Voters should always confirm their choices on the paper printout, if there is one, to ensure their ballots are properly cast, she said.
Smith said she’s concerned that won’t happen on Nov. 4 if there are long lines of voters. “What worries me is there’s going to be so much pressure … for people to hurry up” and make their choices. “I’m concerned that people won’t take that extra moment to check.”
Ken Fields, a spokesman for ES&S, the makers of the iVotronic machines, said the devices have a built-in safeguard to prevent voters from voting incorrectly. There is a required review screen that summarizes a voter’s choices before the ballot is officially cast and tallied. “You cannot cast your votes without completing that review screen,” he said.
Fields agreed that proper touch-screen calibration is the key to preventing problems with votes that may accidentally be displayed for the wrong candidates on the screen. “There’s no [problem] with the equipment,” he said.
Last week, a report from three voting security advocacy groups said that that some states were not doing everything they could to ensure the accuracy of e-voting machines. The report, released by Common Cause, Verified Voting and the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law , also gave 10 states inadequate grades in three of four categories of safeguards that should be in place for e-voting.
