Democrats' leader decries voting glitches

Harold Gwin - Nov 6, 2004

Unofficial returns showed 51,818 ballots cast but 47,768 recorded for president.

SHARON, Pa. — Mercer County Republicans aren't really concerned about glitches with county voting machines that caused problems in Tuesday's election.

The Rev. Donald Wilson, party chairman, said Friday that he doesn't want to jump to any conclusions about the problems and suggested that the county elections office be allowed to do its official ballot count and move on from there.

His counterpart in the Democratic Party, Bob Lark, was less forgiving.

Called for firing

He advised the Mercer County commissioners Thursday that they should fire Jim Bennington, county director of elections, because the county appeared ill-prepared for glitches with electronic touch-screen voting machines in about a dozen precincts in the county's southwestern corner. Bennington was unavailable for a response before Vindicator press time.

Lark charged that a number of voters may have been disenfranchised by the problems that shut down voting machines for all or most of the day. Some precincts didn't have enough paper ballots for people to fill out, and Lark said he suspects some people didn't bother coming back when a new supply of paper ballots arrived.

He had no estimate on how many people may have missed a chance to vote, but he did have some questions Friday about the accuracy of the count coming out of the electronic machines that were working.

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