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CPA passes, but voting system fails
Updated: 11/22/2006 10:15 PM
By: Karen Honikel

  
  
On Election Day, the Community Preservation Act in Lenox failed to pass by just two votes. Lenox Land Trust President Kevin Sprague was disappointed when the CPA didn't pass. So he decided to put together a petition to get a recount. To his delight, the recount reversed the vote and passed the act. But to his dismay, it was the voting system that failed.

Sprague said, "Even in a small town like ours with fairly straightforward process, using electronic machines that errors, substantial errors were able to slip in and that's distressing."

In the recount, it passed by nine votes. Clerks of the Registrar's Office found that some of the voters did not shade in the oval circle dark enough or marked it using a check mark. These votes were read by the computer as blank when they should have been rejected and redone.

  
  
Duby said, "And when they fed them into the machine, the machine took it, but the machine read it as a blank. It didn't see anything there. It didn't reject it because it thought they had left it blank."

Three years ago, the Registrar's Office switched to a computerized system called Accu-Vote. Before this, a lever system was used. And although there were no problems with it, Town Clerk Marie Duby said they were forced to change systems.

Duby said, "My understanding was that we were told from the state that the federal government required it. "

Duby said she liked the old lever system better because it was just simpler for people to use.

  
  
She said, "Myself, personally, yes, because once the machines were set up you would go in and you would throw a lever. If you changed your mind and decided you wanted to change who you were voting for, you would put that lever back up and put the other one down. "

The Town Clerk's office has put in calls to the Secretary of State's office to let them know of the flaw in the computerized voting system, which is used throughout Massachusetts.