Saturday, May 20, 2006

"Aww, I got another write-in for Richard Hertz, whose Dick . . . "

Leave it to those wacky Wilkes-Barre voters.

The voting services director there is a little unhappy about some snarky write-in votes cast on his brand-new electronic machines. The old lever machines made write-ins hard to do. Apparently, faced with the easy write-in freedom provided by the new machines, things got, as Rummy tells us happens whenever things get free, a little "messy" in Upper Askem. Thanks to The Daily Rant for pointing out this bit in the Wilkes-Barre (soon to be defunct) Times Leader:

“I’m disturbed by some of the swear words,” said Luzerne County Election Bureau Director Leonard Piazza. He was most offended by a pair of “c” words which appeared several times.

“That’s disgusting. If that’s the kind of word you’re going to type into these machines, then you ought not to be bothering to vote because that’s an insult to the voting process,” Piazza said.

Piazza said he had a hunch he’d see profanity because voters spell out write-in votes on the new voting machines by touching letters on a keyboard screen. . . .

Piazza believes people found the new machines more fun to use, but he cautions that they shouldn’t forget that voting is serious business.

“It’s not a joke. These machines are not a toy.”

Yeah, yeah . . . it's all fun and games until Dick Hertz ends up a County Commissioner, then you'll be sorry. (A "pair of 'c' words"?)

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