Latest local news, weather and high school sports for Toledo area

Who can forget the 'hanging chad' incident in the 2000 Presidential election???

The man with the magnifying glass looking at voter's punch cards became an icon of that election.

In 2012, it's a new age...and the electronic voting machines that were swept into service following the chad debacle in 2000 are now coming under fire for registering votes to the wrong candidate.

The Marion Star reports that Marion county voters have been complaining that when they attempted to select Mitt Romney on the machine's touch screen, the device instead registered their vote for President Barak Obama.

“You want to vote for who you want to vote for, and when you can’t it’s irritating,” Joan Stevens told the paper after she had to select and re-select her choice for president three times.

Stevens said she alerted Jackie Smith, a board of elections member who was present. Smith declined to comment, but Stevens says she mentioned that the machine had been having problems all day.

Sophia Rogers, the director of the board of elections for Marion County, suggested the issue may have been caused by not hitting the button directly or tapping with more than one finger. Stevens insists she was aware the machine had to be operated a certain way.

“Because of her issue, we had that machine recalibrated,” Rogers said. “I am certain the equipment works properly.”

Rogers said that those still skeptic about using the electronic stations have the option of filling out a paper ballot, even voting from home and mailing via absentee ballot.

Another voter in Kansas had a similar problem with the same type of machine.

In an e-mail to TheBlaze.com, Nancy, who asked that her last name not be used, said her husband noticed that when he was touching the Romney portion of the screen, the vote as being registered as one for Obama.

“He played around with the field a little and realized that in order to vote for Romney, his finger had to be exactly on the mark,” Nancy wrote in the email. She said “the invisible Obama field came down about 1/4 [of an inch]” into what should technically have been the Romney area.

In a phone interview with TheBlaze, she explained further that her husband said he felt the area on the touch screen that could be pushed to vote for Obama was larger than that for Romney.

The Kansas Secretary of State, when contacted about the problem, said that it was likely a calibration issue with the machine.

Do you trust the electronic voting machines to register your vote correctly?  Shoud we go back to the punch cards or paper ballots?