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Pennlive.com
The Patriot-News
Sunday, December 24, 2006
BY TOM BOWMAN, GARRY LENTON AND AL WINN
Of The Patriot-News
The Republican State Committee is asking the state to
investigate reports of voting machine malfunctions yesterday.
As many as 12 counties -- Cumberland, Lebanon and Lancaster
among them -- reported problems, according to a letter GOP counsel Lawrence
Tabas wrote to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes. Some people
reported that machines were changing Republican votes to Democratic, Tabas
said.
However, state election officials said late yesterday they
had received no reports from counties of any such malfunctions.
"The bottom line is that we have no evidence at this
point in time that ... somebody who wanted to cast a vote for a given candidate
ultimately left a polling place voting for somebody else," said Cortes.
State Democratic Party spokesman Abe Amoros said he equated
the GOP claims to "anticipated sour grapes." Larry Smar, a spokesman
for Sen.-elect Bob Casey Jr., said the GOP "seems like [it's] trying to
set up a voter fraud case."
State Attorney General Tom Corbett said last night that if
voter fraud allegations come forward, they could be investigated by county
district attorneys or his office.
Nationwide, the MoveOn.org Political Action organization is
offering a $250,000 reward for evidence leading to a felony voter-fraud
conviction.
CUMBERLAND COUNTY:
Jerry Wilkes, county information management and technology
director, said last night that investigations were carried out on seven
complaints that touching one candidate's name on an electronic ballot produced
another name. He said he believed slips of the finger were to blame.
"No one could reproduce the problems. I'm satisfied
with the way the machines operated," he said. "Election judges said
that, upon reflection, it was human error."
LEBANON COUNTY:
Human error was blamed for a delay in balloting in all
Lebanon County districts. Officials could not get the machines to start
yesterday morning.
Lebanon's problems were traced to improperly formatted
computer disks that county election staff prepared for each of the machines.
"It was our fault," Lebanon County Commissioner
William Carpenter said.
Because of the delay, the county election board voted to
keep the polls in Lebanon County open until 9 last night. The Pennsylvania
Department of State, which oversees elections, ordered the county to use paper
ballots to record votes cast from 8 to 9 p.m.
DAUPHIN COUNTY:
Calls to WHP-AM alleged voting machines were incorrectly
recording ballots cast in Harrisburg.
The complaints, which were unfounded, alleged that voting
machines in the city were recording straight-party ballots for the opposite
party.
The calls might have been part of a campaign to discredit
electronic voting, said Steve Chiavetta, Dauphin County's chief clerk of
elections.
If so, they had little or no impact on voters, he said.
Voter turnout across the region was heavy.
Karen Balaban, a lawyer for the state Democratic Party,
theorized the calls might have been an attempt to discourage Harrisburg's
mostly Democratic and minority voters from going to the polls.
"I think it's sad," she said.
Dauphin County Commissioner Nick DiFrancesco, who oversees
the county elections bureau, called the reports bogus.
"It's one thing to question the use of electronic
voting systems, but it's another thing to make allegations that cause people to
question the validity of the election," he said.
Cathy Ennis, a spokeswoman for the Department of State, said
the calls, while unethical, probably do not constitute a violation of the
state's election law.
LANCASTER COUNTY:
As in Lebanon County, Lancaster County extended voting until
9 last night.
More than 40 vote-scanning machines throughout the county
malfunctioned, chief clerk Andrea McCue said.
CALLERS COMPLAIN:
Cecilia Martinez, executive director of the Reform
Institute, a sponsor of a voter-problem hot line (866-698-6831), said operators
had received nearly 2,000 calls from Pennsylvania by midafternoon; nearly
one-third of the calls came from Lancaster County.
Callers complained that people had to use provisional
ballots and that polling places had "super-long lines with
confusion," she said.
Staff writers Andrea Ciccocioppo, Elizabeth Gibson, Charles
Thompson and Chris A. Courogen and The Associated Press contributed to this
story. TOM BOWMAN: 255-8271 or tbowman@patriot-news.com GARRY LENTON: 255-8264
or glenton@patriot-news.com AL WINN: 832-2090 or awinn@patriot-news.com
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