How do you recount nothing?

May 25, 2007

A recount Thursday of the nearly 1,700 ballots cast in the May 12 mayoral election in Helotes yielded no change in the number of votes, officials said, confirming that incumbent Jon Allan lost to Tom Schoolcraft by 21 votes.Allan picked up one more vote from a provisional ballot that was verified after Election Day.

Allan said that he requested the recountâ€”filed with the Bexar County Elections Departmentâ€”because the city had just started using electronic voting machines and he was leery of the potential problems the machines might have.

City Secretary Grace Tamez said there was no change in either early voting or Election Day totals.

Schoolcraft, along with two newly elected councilmen, was sworn in as mayor at Thursday night’s City Council meeting.

I understand Allan asking for a recount, the problem is that you can’t really do a true recount with electronic voting machines. There is no way to know once the vote is cast whether it was recorded correctly and if a vote wasn’t recorded correctly a recount will do nothing to bring that to light.

In the 2004 general election, I voted early, I would have voted often but they frown on that. We stood in line forever and then when I went to vote I certainly didn’t choose Bush but when I was reviewing my choices pretty as you please Bush’s name was there as the person I voted for. Now, I am not a electronically challenged person, I understand how a computer works, they don’t intimidate me and I know which name I checked when I was voting. Of course I went back and changed the vote and the second time during the review it showed Kerry’s name but I have no proof that my vote was counted for Kerry. I can’t stress to you enough that the initial mistake was not user error, I watched the check mark next to Kerry’s name appear the first time and was not running my fingers over the screen so that it could have accidentally changed. If I hadn’t caught the change on the review or if the machine changed my vote again without my knowledge a recount would only show the mistaken vote not a reflection of my vote. Electronic voting machines aren’t sound. We all seem to know that but our counties continue to invest in them.

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