Voting machines still not certified

Thirty-six hours before the polls open for Election Day, the St. Thomas-St. John Board of Elections had yet to certify its electronic voting machines.

"We'll know later," Board Chairwoman Alecia Wells said after a training session for poll workers Sunday evening on St. John.

Board members have reported two main problems with the machines on St. Thomas. First, the ballots were not lining up properly on the machines. Second, the section of the ballot for the St. Thomas-St. John Board of Elections race was improperly recording votes, allowing only three votes to be cast when voters should be allowed to enter three votes for St. Thomas candidates and one for a St. John candidate.

As the weekend drew to a close, Wells said on Sunday that she had no further information on the status of these problems or when the machines would be certified.

"I live on St. John, I work on St. John, I go to school on St. John, I go to church on St. John," Wells said.

The machines were being tested on St. Thomas in a warehouse across the street from the Elections Office.

Board members Lawrence Boschulte and Harry Daniel both referred questions about the status of the certification to Wells.

However, board member Colette White-Amaro said technicians were making progress. She said they worked most of Saturday and into Sunday testing the machines on St. Thomas, and as far as she knew, the issues previously reported were being fixed.

White-Amaro said the board hopes to certify the machines at a meeting on St. Thomas this afternoon.

The law requires that the board, by at least one designated representative, witness an errorless voting machine test, then certify the machines for use on Election Day. The law does not say what happens if this does not occur. Both Wells and Boschulte have said it may be possible for voters to use paper ballots for the problematic Board of Elections race and vote the rest of the ballot on an electronic machine.

None of the board members on Sunday night seemed particularly troubled by the approaching deadline to certify the machines.

A rickshaw puller-turned farmer from Haryana was invited to Ramgarh Sikri village, on the Punjab-Himachal border in Hoshiarpur district, on Monday to demonstrate his innovation to Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. The 49-year-old uneducated farmer, Dharamveer Kamboj, from Damla village demonstrated his multi-purpose food processing machine that is aimed at providing a one-stop solution for farm processing of herbs, flowers and fruits for Kandi Area Fruit and Herbal Processing Society (KAFHPS).

The processor is capable of extracting oil/gel from various herbs. The unit can process 150 kg aloe vera or amla in an hour.

Kamboj, while talking to The Indian Express over the phone, said he used to be a rickshaw puller in Delhi, nearly two decades ago. He returned to Himachal Pradesh after he met with an accident, and took to farming.

In 1990, he became the first farmer in his area to cultivate hybrid tomatoes, and he even developed some devices like battery-operated spraying machine, insect trapping device and farm implement customised for ploughing.