Diebold Disaster: Company gets 'F' from election board chair as machines fail all over Cuyahoga County OH on Primary Da

50 Temp Workers Hired to Count Absentee Ballots which Diebold Machines Fail to Scan Properly...

Problems Also Reported with ES&S and in Several Other OH Counties...

Add this to our previous report on the Diebold Disaster in Cuyahoga County, Ohio during yesterday Primary Election. The Cleveland Plain Dealer headlines their story : "First all-electronic election marred...

Add this to our previous report on the Diebold Disaster in Cuyahoga County, Ohio during yesterday Primary Election. The Cleveland Plain Dealer headlines their story: "First all-electronic election marred by problems".

As expected the word "Glitch" makes it's way quickly into the headlines in Columbus Dispatch's coverage ("Glitches delay voting and reporting of results") as they cover problems across a number of counties, including counties that use ES&S machines which also failed in a number of locations. Inevitably, the poll workers are blamed by officials, of course.

As to Cuyahoga, the Plain Dealer has set up a running blog on their website covering the ongoing problems. Here's the latest...

Election workers continue to count votes

12:07 p.m.

Cuyahoga County election workers continued to count votes Wednesday, with about 85 percent of the votes cast on the touch-screen machines counted by 11:15 a.m. But 70 memory cards - with results from 200 precincts - were missing. Cuyahoga County board of elections officials are checking the voting machines to see if the cards were inadvertantly left inside.

Meanwhile, a second team of 50 temporary agency employees continued the hand count of 17,000 paper ballots used by absentee voters. Election officials decided to hand count the paper ballots after tests on the optical scan machines showed innaccuracies. Vote totals for the absentee ballots are expected sometime this evening.