Voters nationwide reported some 1,100 problems with electronic voting machines on Tuesday, including trouble choosing their intended candidates. The e-voting glitches reported to the Election Protection Coalition, an umbrella group of volunteer poll monitors that set up a telephone hotline, included malfunctions blamed on everything from power outages to incompetent poll workers.

Angry, “disenfranchised,” Luddite voters are wondering how it could possibly be that their machines kept showing the wrong candidates? Conspiracy! Karl Rove! GOP saboteurs! Yeah, or maybe your own confused little fingers!

An electronic voting machine official explains:

A spokesoman for the company that makes the touch-screen machines used in Pinellas, Palm Beach and two other Florida counties, Alfie Charles of Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., said the machines’ monitors may need to be recalibrated periodically.

The most likely reason the summary screen showed wrong candidates was because voters pushed the wrong part of the touch screen in the first place, Charles said.

Doh.

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