Machine Problems Cause Long-Lines, Vote Dissatisfaction and Ultimately a New Election In Hinds County, Mississippi

So what happened on Nov. 4, 2003 Election Day in Hinds County, Mississippi and why is it important? The voting system, AVS WINvote, was new to the voters and to the poll workers. Poll workers and election officials had been trained on how to use the new machines and what to do if there were problems. However, the training was not good enough to overcome the problems that they had.

The polls opened at 7AM and almost immediately the machines began failing causing voters to go to pencil and paper ballots. Even that system began to fail when there were not enough paper ballots to go around and, in some precincts, they did not even have pencils for the voters. Voters were also forced to find space, with no privacy, so they could fill in their ballots.  Some voters just gave up in disgust and didn’t bother to vote.

AVS technicians spent the day getting machines back into operating order. The lines of voters wanting to vote became long when the machines started to go down and the poll workers were never able to recover from this backlog. A major part of the problem was that this was an important election with a full ballot.

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=1078

So what happened to the machines? Three days after Election Day it was reported that the problem was that the machines began to overheat causing the failures. Hinds County Tax Payers had spent $1.6 Million for this new technology.

The poorly working machines, plus a lack of paper ballots and pencils, and long lines of voters wanting to vote brought into question a State Senate race and a County Tax Assessor race.

An investigation by a state Senate Ad-Hoc Committee was begun. They found that beside the problems already stated here that, the paper ballots were not initialed by election workers, per state law. The State Attorney General made the decision to count them anyway.

The Chairman of the Ad-Hoc Committee, Sen. Terry  Burton stated, “"We were unable to determine the will of the voters.” On January 19, 2004 a decision was made by the Senate to send the election back to the people and do it all over again. So, on Feb. 10 the voters get to go back to the polls and do it all over again.

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=1079