CNN is reporting that voting machines malfunctioned in Horry County this morning and that some voters were turned away. Poll workers said the machines have been down since polls opened and that they are not reading activation cards. All of the county’s 100 precincts are reportedly affected.
Read the full story here.
And in The State.
The link to The State’s story is not working now, perhaps because the paper changed its story radically between its initial online posting on Saturday – the day of the Republican primary in SC – and the next day. The CNN story also contains significant changes from its original.
We aren’t sure yet what accounts for the revisions, but it does nothing to shore up my confidence in the voting system here – nor in the media’s ability to cover it responsibly.
Meanwhile, we are doing some investigation of our own and will let you know what we discover. While the “new” story seems to be that it was operator error on the part of election workers rather than machine malfuntioning that caused the problems in Horry County, the fact remains that the precincts did not follow the law by having emergency ballots on hand, and there are credible reports that people were turned away at the polls and told to return later.
If McCain’s race had been too tight to call, this would be a HUGE issue right now. As it is, it is up to people who truly care about the integrity of elections to pay attention and keep the process honest.
Stay tuned.
Here are a couple of links to The State reporting on voting machine problems in Horry County:
http://www.thestate.com/365/story/290427.html
http://www.thestate.com/scpolitics-wire/story/290457.html