I'm  not sure how publicizied this was outside of the Washington area.
However, voting machine problems were not limited to Florida during
Tuesday's primaries.  I live in Montgomery County, Maryland and our new
touch-screen machines had a few problems, though I don't think as bad as
the Florida reports.

First, poll workers often weren't sure how to set them up.  The polling
place in my precinct opened up at least one hour late.  Since many people
try to go before work, this is troubling.

Second, the procedures seemed oddly bureaucratic.  You checked in; then you
met another person who gave you a slip of paper; then you took the slip to
another person who gave you the credit card-like piece of plastic to stick
in the voting machine.  One friend told me her precinct had yet another
step (a real bottleneck): you waited for someone to walk you to a machine.
As there was only one person for this job, about 50% of the precinct's 15
machines went unused.

Third, the counting procedures.  Amusingly, this went much slower than
punch cards.  Why?  The poll workers often did really know how to calculate
totals.  And the election officials required that the poll workers drive to
Rockville, the county seat, to deliver the results personally off the
machines.  The officials in Rockville were also just learning so this went
very slowly.  Moreover, Montgomery is large in area and has over 875,000
people and several hundred precincts so this took forever.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Neighboring Prince George's County also
switched to the new machines.  They had their workers modem in the
results.  I think they had them totalled up in about 1/2 an hour.
Amusingly, it looked like Shriver might beat Van Hollen in the hot
congressional primary for the 8th district in a landslide at first.  It
turned out that the few precincts from Prince George's in the district
reported in far earlier than anything from Montgomery.  Van Hollen narrowly
beat Shriver even though the first few precincts gave Shriver a 72% to 12%
lead over his nearest opponent.  (We're still waiting for Shriver's
concession by the way.)

Finally, the paper reported a few complaints of the plastic card popping
out before people finished voting.  Others claimed they got the nonpartisan
ballot instead of the correct party ballot. They claimed poll workers were
unhelpful.  I cannot help but wonder if they simply were not properly
registered in the party.

On the positive side: (1) it was not possible to overvote, (2) the machines
supposedly have aural assists for the blind or illiterate, (3) I didn't
find it hard, and (4) for once, several people I voted for actually won.

Regards,
David Lublin
American University
dlublin@american.edu