I just returned from Poll Watcher training in Duval County Florida. Early Voting for the Primary begins Monday. I caught the most interesting tidbit while hanging around the Democratic HQ. Apparently, since Early Voting starts "early in the morning" Monday, the (Republican) Supervisor of Elections decided it was best to send the voting machines home for the weekend with the poll workers. Yeah, I am not f'ing making that up! And yes, I did fall out of my chair, lose my hearing and vision and swear like a drunk sailor when I heard this. It's so ridiculous that only a Republican could come up with this plan.
They could've hired 14 small trucks to deliver 4 voting machines to one location in each of the 14 Districts. That would be the professional thing to do. But they thought it better to pack their employees' personal vehicles up with 4 machines each so they could take them home over the weekend and deliver them "early in the morning" to the Early Voting sites on Monday.
Now, it's totally absurd to think that voting machines are sitting in living rooms and garages, and maybe even cars, all over Jacksonville for weekend. It's even more absurd when you go online to http://duvalelections.com/... and discover that the polls don't open until 10AM on Monday!! But even if they opened at 6AM, I think there would be a better way to handle this. I assume they're going to do this for the General Election as well.
What are they thinking? I mean, at the very least you'd think they would TRY to perform SOME preventative measures to protect those machines or at least pretend like they are.
The best part? The person who told me this was informed by the Supervisor of Elections himself during a PR thing designed to make us feel better about voting machine security.
I miss my voting rights.
Note: I am adding a few bits of information here to help clear up some confusion found in the comments.
1- Early Voting: Here in Duval County, Florida, we actually have a nice voting feature called "Early Voting". From August 28th- September 3rd, there are 14 local libraries, one in each District, opened as polling places. The hours are 10-6 M-F and 1-5 on the weekends. On Septermber 5th we have the "real" election day where all of the normal voting precints are open with normal voting hours. We will do this again for the General Election.
2- Voting Machines: For Early Voting there will be 3 touch-screen Diebold (paperless) machines and 1 Opti-scan Diebold machine. Yes, both types are Diebold but at least one type has a paper trail. As far as I know, this will be the same set-up in all the precincts on Primary and General Election Day.