Total disaster

This election is turning into an utter disaster. Voting machines are breaking down all over the country. Paper ballots are running out. Votes are being lost. Here is just a small sampling from the nearby town of Montclair, NJ:

I live in Montclair NJ, heavy Democratic territory. Went to vote at 10:30 am; the two electronic voting machines for my district (Ward 3, District 5) and the neighboring District which votes in the same location (Ward 3, District 3) were both broken. [Poll workers said] both had been operational at the open but broke when people tried to put in write-in candidates. . . . I was handed an emergency ballot and had to fill it out in the open room. Not enough pens to go around and it does not look like there are enough emergencey ballots on hand for the rest of the day.

And various people at Baristanet are reporting similar problems:

I just returned from my polling place at 151 Harrison Ave. Montclair. The brand new electronic voting machine is broken, and they are handing out emergency handwritten ballots.

and this is scary:

After the gentleman in front of me went in to vote and closed the curtain, the machine started beeping, sounding like a garbage truck when it goes in reverse, though quite as loud. One of the poll workers exclaimed, "Oh Sh.." and went running after the repairman who was already out in the parking lot with his Essex County Sheriff deputy escort.

When I left about 15 minutes later they were still working on the machine. I overheard the Democratic poll challenger explaining over the phone that several votes had been lost and that they had been waiting for more than hour to get emergency ballots. There was a long line of voters, some bored, some frustrated, when I left.

Since I voted absentee, I don't yet know what's happening at my precinct, but in the primary election, we had the same problems in my precinct. I'm going to head over to the polling place in about a half hour to see what's up.

And, TPM Cafe has this from suburban St. Louis:

My wife just came home from voting here in Webster Groves MO. She used the electronic touch-screen voting system. . . She touched Claire McCaskill's picture and the machine recorded a vote for Jim Talent. She then called one of the people running the polling center who helped her correct the problem. My wife then had to call the person over another time after it recorded her vote a Republican again. In her frustration she asked the person who was responsible for the design of this system. The polling person leaned in very close to my wife and whispered, "We're f----d."