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.

Darcy Richardson has been writing the most comprehensive story of U.S. political parties (with emphasis on the parties that were not the two major parties) ever written. His Volume III has just been published. The full title is Others: Third Parties from Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party to the Decline of Socialism in America. It covers 1911-1919. It is 407 pages, hardcover. The period covered by Volume III is fairly short, but more happened in this decade, than at any other time in the 20th century, relative to third parties. So the decision to devote an entire volume to just 9 years is understandable.

Massachusetts has four ballot-qualified parties: Democratic, Republican, Green-Rainbow, and Working Families. The Working Families Party isn’t holding a presidential primary.

The other three parties are holding a presidential primary. The Massachusetts Secretary of State has already released the list of Democratic and Republican primary candidates. The Green-Rainbow list won’t be released until December 10.

The Democratic candidates are: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, Obama, Richardson.

The Republican candidates are: Giuliani, Huckabee, Hunter, McCain, Paul, Romney, Tancredo, Thompson.

The Republican state chair did not include Alan Keyes in his recommendations to the Secretary of State, even though Keyes is in the Republican presidential primaries in most states.