Cook County Election Mess

Most fair observers would call the Cook County primary election a mess. Demands for a recount have come from both sides of the aisle, according to WBBM. And Maureen Murphy had this to say in the Tribune:

Fueled by concerns about "poor management and organizational incompetence," Maureen Murphy, vice chair of the county GOP and a member of the county Board of Review, said she has met with about 200 suburban election judges who detailed a litany of problems from the March 21 primary.

Among the issues, she said, were a touch-screen voting machine that "blew up like an M80" and had to be unplugged; machines showing votes that hadn't been cast; and machines not working at all. In one meeting she asked about 125 judges how many of them were confident that every vote at their polling place had been counted, and no hands went up, she said.

"We tell people every vote counts. But we do not believe every vote has been counted," she said. "This makes what happened in Florida, folks, look like a textbook election," she said, referring to the 2000 presidential election.

In response to criticism, election officials are conducting investigations of the equipment, one of which will be conducted by an outside computer analyst. ABC7:

Election officials claim that by the time voters go to the polls again in November the machines will be new, the election judges will really be trained and every polling place will have a technical expert to handle problems. The election boards are even planning to stage a mock election in late summer to field test the equipment and the personnel. All of the bills will be sent to the new voting machine company, Sequoia, which is owned by a controversial firm in Venezuela.

Cook County Clerk David Orr has issued a plan to improve voting. We'll see.