Voting fiasco here in Yuma County

As an official election observer, I traveled around to seven of the polling places in Yuma County.

What I saw were long lines at almost every place, broken printers that were supposed to produce the necessary customized paper ballots and only four touchscreen machines at each place.

If each voter takes an average of 10 minutes to vote, the throughput on those touchscreen machines is a total of only 24 voters per hour. The paper ballot printers were crucial, and they failed miserably.

I saw many voters, especially very early in the morning, who had to leave the line to go to work. Hopefully, they came back in the evening, but who can tell?

So far I have seen no apology from the Yuma County Elections Board, and no promise or plan to make things better. As I wrote this, their website had the latest news as “Voting made easy — 11 Convenient Vote Centers takes the debate out of where to VOTE!!” This does not look like an agency that has any idea of how to provide service to the general public. Perhaps they do not WANT people to vote. There is a lot of that sentiment going around these days.

I did see some encouraging signs at the polling places. The election workers worked extremely hard and in a very professional manner, even through all the problems. I was also encouraged by the determination of voters to stand in line for hours to have their vote counted.

David Hachadorian

Yuma