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Show MACHINE AGE? Voters Rap Tab Machine CHICAGO, ILL. This may be a machine age, but thousands of Chicagoans are convinced that, for them, at least, it is not the voting machine age. A recent primary provided a major test for use of the voting devices here. It produced ruffled tempers, charges of fraud, and definitely def-initely slowed not only the voting, but counting of ballots. That last item was one where the mechanical mechani-cal X-makers were supposed to shine. A total of 1,850 voting machines were used in 1,444 of Chicago's 4,-238 4,-238 precincts. No machines were used in the country precincts outside Chicago, but the Cook county board has had them under consideration. Vhicago has them ordered . for thf rest of its precincts. pre-cincts. f The principal complaint by citizens citi-zens against the machines in Tuesday's Tues-day's voting was that insufficient time was allowed a voter to operate oper-ate the machine. When waiting lines formed in many of the precincts, pre-cincts, precinct election officials allowed a voter only four minutes to pull the handles on the voting machine. With the large number of names to be looked over and to be located on the machine before the voter could operate the proper handle, four minutes was hardly enough. Since the machine curtains are locked until the voter pulls the vote lever to register his choices, there was no way to eject a voter from a booth until he had completed complet-ed his balloting. Impatience Marked The rub came in the impatience of those waiting their turns at the machines. Throughout the city delays de-lays of 15 minutes to more than an hour were reported by voters who waited in line. Many were reported report-ed to have taken one look at the "monsters," as one politician called them, and retreated from the polling place. Others sighted the long line waiting and stalked out. Mayor Martin H. Kennelly himself him-self spent 10 minutes in a voting machine booth at the Edgewater Beach apartments, where he lives. He had waited 15 minutes. One politician estimated that 20 votes had been lost in every precinct pre-cinct where the machines were used. Republicans charged that the slowness at the machines worked to the advantage of the Democrats. They contended that the Chicago "ijod of election commissioners com-missioners deliberately assigned the devices to strong GOP precincts. pre-cincts. The commissioners denied this. They said the machines were assigned as-signed to whichever precincts were most conveniently arranged to receive them. Some basements in residences serve as polling places and considerable trouble was encountered in getting the bulky 1,100 pound machines down narrow, winding stairways into such places. Instructions Confusing Election board officials said that of 200 complaints, 90 per cent stemmed from the failure. of voters and ballot clerks to follow instructions. instruc-tions. Some voters complained that the demonstration of the machine's ma-chine's operation turned out to be the citizen's vote, although not his choices. Another complaint was that when the party preference changed from one voter to the next, election officials failed to change the lever which controlled party selection. The fast count claimed by sponsors spon-sors of the machines also failed to materialize. The city news bureau, bu-reau, which compiles unofficial returns re-turns for Chicago newspapers reported re-ported that totals from the first machine precinct came an hour and a half after the polls closed. Many precincts using paper ballots bal-lots reported much sooner. The machines used in Chicago cost $1,380 each. Another 1,000 of them are on order and expected to be delivered in time for the November No-vember election. Magician's Spirit Fails To Materialize at Crave COLUMBUS, OHIO. If the spirit spir-it of magician Howard Thurston is hanging about his burial place, he doesn't care to let anybody know. For the 12th year, Claude D. Noble, a 58-year-old Detroit advertising adver-tising man, tried today to contact Thurston's spirit on the --anniversary of his death. Noble stood in the mausoleum and held a can of cement. If Thurston's Thurs-ton's spirit was near (and able), it was supposed to knock the cement from Noble's hand. Before the magician died in 1936, he and Noble made a pact to try experiments such as today's. Thurston promised to manifest himself after death if he could. In previous years Noble held objects ob-jects such as a wand, a photograph, photo-graph, a coin, and a Thurston biography. biog-raphy. Today's can of cement was made by a company Thurston formerly owned. If that can had been knocked out of Noble's hand But it wasn't. |