Early voters report touchscreen problems

And so it begins. A Republican county in West Virginia:

At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.[...]

Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.

"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said. [...]

Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright said, "After we got a call from the Secretary of State's Office, we recalibrated the machine. We had already voted over 400 people with no problems."

Voting problems occur when voters touch the screen, Waybright said, but do not put their fingers inside boxes for their candidates. Waybright blamed the problem on voters.

"People make mistakes more than the machines," he said, "but I went in yesterday and recalibrated the machines. We are doing everything we can not to disenfranchise anybody."

Matheney remains concerned. "Leaving the polling place," she said, "I wondered how many voters might not have noticed that their vote was switched on the machine."

Good question. And I'm betting there's no paper trail to verify the vote. I'd remind you that the touchscreen companies belong to avowed Republicans who promised to deliver the last election to Bush.

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