The Watchdog Gets Answers About Shelby Election Glitches

WREG-TV Memphis    19 October 2006

It's not what Shelby County Elections officials wanted to see.  A story about two people voting on the very first day of early voting who run into problems.  Big problems.  They were both given computer cards to plug into Diebold Election machines.  The cards are supposed to provide the correct ballots for each voters address.  In this case...both voters got Germantown Municipal election ballots...even though neither one of them lives in Germantown.  What we have here is the textbook definition of a problem.

James Johnson of the Elections Commission says, sorry.  Human beings program those cards.  And in this area there are a lot of overlapping voter precincts.  "By our precinct officials programming these cards manually," Johnson says, "...they may have ed the correct precinct, but they may have ed the wrong particular split."  Johnson says the problem has been rectified.  That's a $20 dollar word for fixed.

The second problem is a bit more complicated.  Shirley Neely says she was voting, saw the Germantown ballot come up, and then went and got a poll worker.  While she was gone, her voting computer screen went black, and then up popped the words "Your vote has been rejected."  Yet poll workers told her that their figures showed she had voted.  Neely has voted on the Diebold system several times in early voting and says she knows the machine very well.  "I punched some things," she says, "...but until I punch cast vote I have not voted.  It has not registered my vote."

James Johnson saw Neely's story on NewsChannel 3 and called her at home.  "After having an opportunity to speak with her and get her side of the story," he said, "...we realized that the machine began to cancel out and that's what it apparently started to do."  Johnson says poll workers did do the right thing by telling Neely she could vote on a paper ballot.  "We have a process in place," Johnson says, "...and the officials did the correct thing by allowing her to cast a provisional ballot.  We can look at the provisional, and the circumstances surrounding it during post election, but certainly at the time we're counting the provisional and paper write in ballots."  Johnson also said.."There is no question her vote will count."

For the people voting at Greater Middle Baptist Church...the news didn't dampen their enthusiasm for voting.  Not as much as the weather did.  Still there are questions surrounding the integrity of the system.  Oscar Williams of Memphis says "It's hard to determine whether my vote will count or not.  I've heard about all the problems...the Germantown thing, you know."  But another voter had no troubles.  Pat Clay of Memphis says simply "I feel my vote will count and it'll be secure."