Swing State Ohio

The Strickland campaign is on top of things, asking people to register their voting experiences on the website.

If you or anyone you know experiences a voting irregularity today, please register it here.

The safety and sanctity of our elections depends on us holding those who run them accountable.

Brian Flannery has issued a request to Ken Blackwell:

Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Bryan E. Flannery this morning made a request to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to extend voting hours to 8:15pm this evening in response to numerous reports of voters being turned away at polling locations in Cuyahoga and Summit Counties. “Voters of this state deserve every opportunity to cast their ballots.” Flannery said. “Turning away voters because of defective machines or inexperienced poll workers is inexcusable. We must do everything possible to ensure fair, safe, and honest elections. Extending poll hours and giving those turned away this morning an additional opportunity to cast their ballot is the right thing to do.

Apparently:

NewsChannel5 reported that about 200 election workers will not work the polls because they were confused over the new voting machine.

In Columbus:

High-tech voting got off to a slow start this morning in dozens of Franklin County precincts as poll workers struggled to produce start-of-the-day printouts from new touch-screen machines.

About 50 people who showed up to cast ballots at 6:30 a.m. left their polling places without voting, county elections officials said. About 20 percent of precincts -- more than 160 -- opened as late as 7 a.m., they said.

Voters reported scattered problems with the machines, being used in today's primary election for the first time across Franklin County.

One Republican voter said his vote for U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce registered on the screen for U.S. Sen. Michael DeWine. Pollworkers shut down the machine because of a calibration problem.

At Beck School on the South Side, two of five machines weren't working this morning. Damschroder said paper tapes became loose during transport so the machines incorrectly indicated they had no paper.

In Westerville and Worthington, some voters said their ballots didn't include school levies. White said poll workers loaded the wrong ballots for those voters.

At late-opening precincts, Damschroder said, poll workers mistakenly thought they couldn't let people vote until they printed out reports from each machine to show they had no votes registered before 6:30 a.m.

Cuyahoga County had some problems as well:

BOE Spokeswoman Jane Platten was on WEWS in place of Michael Vu. She apologized that voters were turned away in some places where the machines weren't working this morning, said that the BOE should have been able to provide a paper optical scan ballot if you couldn't vote with the touch screen machines, that didn't happen, she hopes the voters who were turned away will come back. BOE doesn't know if the polls will be extended this evening, case ongoing.

More Cleveland issues:

One voter came out of the polling place early in the morning (when the time it took to vote was very long) and said, "Call your candidate. None of the machines are working, everyone has to vote on paper. It's very chaotic in there. I wouldn't trust it as to security." I made the call. I also called the Plain Dealer.

Later, another voter came up to me and said "I couldn't vote for your guy [Rogers] because I had to vote a Republican ballot in order to vote against [Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken] Blackwell. But the big irony is, none of his machines are working."

Cleveland again:

This is the first Election Day for electronic voting in Cuyahoga County, the largest county in the nation to so far switch over to touch-screen voting. Callers to WTAM 1100 right after the polls opened at 6:30 a.m. reported problems at scattered polling places where the computerized voting systems were not up and running. Some voters were turned away and told to come back later in the day to vote on optical-scan ballots, while other voters say the same locations had no problems to report as little as a half hour later.

I'll have more as the information from around the state continues to come in.

Via email:

Now, generally speaking, do you think things in this country are going in the right direction, or do you feel things are pretty seriously off on the wrong track?

Right direction 22 percent
Wrong track 68 percent
Don't know 10 percent

How would you rate the job being done by George W Bush as President -- excellent, good, just fair or poor?

Excellent 8 percent
Good 21 percent
Just Fair 21 percent
Poor 50 percent
Don't know 0

How would you rate the job being done by Mike DeWine as United States Senator -- excellent, good, just fair or poor?

Excellent 5 percent
Good 29 percent
Just fair 39 percent
Poor 14 percent
Don't know 13 percent

Overall, do you think Mike DeWine deserves reelection as United States Senator, or do you think that someone else should be given a chance?

Deserves reelection 30 percent
Someone else 48 percent
Don't know 21 percent

In the election for United States Senate, if the candidates were (READ AND ROTATE), for whom will you vote? (IF UNDECIDED) Well, if the election were held today, and you had to decide right now, toward which candidate would you lean (READ AND ROTATE)?

Democrat Sherrod Brown 45 percent
Republican Mike DeWine 44 percent
Still undecided 11 percent

These questions are from a survey of 800 likely general election voters conducted by The Feldman Group April 24-April 27 for the Sherrod Brown for U.S. Senate campaign. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Sample base is 2004 general election voters selected by the random cluster method from the Ohio voter file and screened for likely participation in the November 2006 general election.

Learn more about the anonymous chocolatier.