blogger interrupted

After visits to a few polling places, the NAACP voter protection office, and plenty of calls, things seem to be going fairly in well in Cuyahoga as of 12.50.  The provisional ballot screwups this morning were real, but it appears poll workers are aware of the issue, and are now issuing provisionals under the rules.

There was an odd problem at a polling place in Cleveland, where the optical scanner kept a rejected ballot that was rejected for the double bubble problem.  This problem stems from a write-in line under the presidential candidates, which leaves the impression for voters that not only do you have to fill in the oval to vote for your candidate, but you must also write in their name.  A voter doing both will have over-voted, and the machine is supposed to reject the ballot and allow the voter to get a new one.

However, at this precinct, one voter who over-voted in this manner had his ballot rejected, but somehow it ended up in the bin anyway, and the voter couldn’t get a new ballot.  The Obama volunteer on-site reported it, and I put him in contact with the NAACP.  If this props up more, I’ll be paying attention, but it seemed isolated.

Bottom line…..so far, so good.