No matter what your political beliefs are, and no matter who you are voting for today, hopefully we can all agree that Americans should all have the right to be able to cast their votes and should have the right to have the votes counted accurately. That is why the reports of voting problems that are already coming out today are so troubling.
Problems with electronic voting were already being reported early today in many battleground states.
Early word on the ground from watchdog organizations indicated that there were problems with getting electronic voting machines up and running in many of the key battleground states, and in other key states the machines would crash during the voting process and had to be rebooted.
But the electronic voting machines are not the only problem.
Fox News is reporting that intimidation tactics, missing ballots and faulty machinery are plaguing voters around the country.
Here is how Fox News is describing the voting problems that they are seeing around the nation:
-----
In Philadelphia, FOX News' Rick Leventhal received a report from Republican poll watcher Chris Hill that two Black Panthers had stationed themselves at the door to a polling station and were intimidating voters. One held a night stick, Hill said.
Hill told FOX News that he went to talk to the men and they told him white power didn't rule there.
The man reportedly carrying a night stick was escorted away from the polling station by police, and FOX News found another Black Panther outside the station who said he was a certified observer. Police asked him and the FOX News crew to leave the polling station.
As of noon, FOXNews.com had received complaints from voters around the country that polling stations were not prepared, that voting lists were inaccurate and some voters were worried when they were asked to cast paper ballots instead of using voting machines.
Gregory Holden reported that the voting list his polling station in Lugoff, S.C., had problems. "Many people who have always voted in this precinct are all of a sudden not on the roll," he said. "They only have five machines and there are about 300 people in line. People are so discouraged some are leaving," he wrote.
-----
If America is the "greatest democracy on earth", then there is NO EXCUSE for Americans not to have a safe, non-threatening location where they can be assured that the voting procedures work and that their votes are counted.
0 comments:
Post a Comment