Goshen, New York, held a special bond election on December 4, for the voters to decide “yes” or “no” on school construction. New York still uses mechanical voting machines. Those machines have counters in the back, much like car odometers. There are only three digits for each voting choice. Thus, when the machine gets up to 999 votes for one particular voting choice, the next vote for that choice turns the counter in the back to zero.

The County Board of Elections understands this, and always makes sure that there are enough machines so that no one machine gets that many voters. However, in this case, the County had loaned the machines to the city, and the officials conducting the city election did not understand the problem. The city only used 2 machines, even though there were 10,000 voters eligible to vote.

When the election was over, one machine’s counters had 309 yes votes, and 10 no votes. The other machine had 314 yes votes and 24 no votes. Over 2,600 voters had voted.

Although one can guess that the “No” side had the majority, and that the true totals on the first machine should have been 309 “yes”, 1,010 “no”…and that the second machine should have been 314 “yes” and 1,024 “no”…one can’t prove that the true results weren’t 1,309 “yes” and 10 “no” on the first machine, and 1,314 “yes” and 24 “no” on the second machine. So it appears the vote will need to be re-done. Thanks to ElectionUpdates for this story.