Voters 'wary' of machines but still feel duty to vote

Voters might have felt a duty to vote Tuesday, but not all of them felt confident their votes were counted accurately in the electronic machines used on Election Day in Monroe County.\nThe Monroe County Courthouse, one of 19 Election Day poll locations in Bloomington, had drawn about 250 voters by 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. Many voters leaving the polls at the courthouse said they felt it was their civic duty to vote but admitted they didn't feel 100 percent confident in the electronic system.\n"I am a little hesitant because there has been controversy," 25-year Bloomington resident Donna Aldrich said. "All I can do is have faith that my vote counts."\n"B" Watt Jorck, a resident of Columbus, Ind., and an IU student who voted in Bartholomew County on Tuesday, said she feels she can't complain about the results if she doesn't try to make things better, but conceded she has little confidence in the voting machines.\n"They're too easily hacked, and this is a very important race to the Republican Party," she said. "I think it's very easy to get into a computer. They've shown that over and over and over and over."\nTuesday was the first time Bloomington resident Kerry Bridges used the electronic voting system in Monroe County, having previously lived in California.\nMachine accuracy and the method used to tally votes in Monroe County is no worse than those of other locations, he said.\n"No matter what method you use, you probably have a similar chance of error," he said. \nBloomington resident Roger Reading said despite the fact that there were voting machine problems in the 2000 election, he felt they had been resolved for this year's election and wanted his voice to be represented by voting.\n"We've had a lot of time since (the 2000 election) to work on them and to debunk the system," he said.\nIU doctoral student Mark Wilson said he has to "assume" his vote counted but presented a solution for helping voters feel their votes were secured at the polls on Election Day.\n"I guess I don't see why the voter can't get some sort of validation of their vote or record of their vote," he said. "It would seem to raise confidence levels if you could walk out with some kind of paper verifying your vote."\nCounty Clerk Jim Fielder could not be reached by press time, but a report released on behalf of the Monroe County Election Board, including Fielder, said the board was confident in the voting machines' reliability, saying they performed "flawlessly" during a public testing in October.\nDespite doubts, voters said they feel a duty to their country to show up at the polls on Election Day.\n"I feel like I don't have a right to bitch if I don't vote," Aldrich said. "I need to express my opinions or just live with whatever the consequences are."\nAldrich said she had her eyes on the Sodrel-Hill race this year.\n"I kind of feel like we got robbed last time," she said of Sodrel's victory in 2004. "I do believe he's very big business-oriented and not very interested in us lowly folks. We aren't really involved in big business."\nJorck agreed that the Sodrel-Hill race was important because of its potential to help swing control of the House of Representatives to Democrats for the first time in more than 10 years.