A Stitch in Haste

This does not bode well for the November elections:

Many New Orleans voters were unable to cast ballots Saturday on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage because voting machines had not been delivered to polling places, a state official said.

At least 35 precincts did not have voting machines because drivers hired to deliver the machines had apparently not shown up for work, said Scott Madere, a spokesman for Secretary of State Fox McKeithen.
...
Madere said inconvenienced voters would be allowed to vote after polling places officially close at 8 p.m. if they are in line at that time.

There are two kinds of chaos that will erupt from this embarrassment. First of course is the disenfranchisement factor for this particular anti-gay initiative, with which I'm honestly not familiar -- some raw data here. (There are also some local elections being held together with the ballot initiative.)

It seems to me that unless the margin of victory or defeat exceeds the total voter registration rolls of the 35 affected precincts, then the entire amendment vote may have to be thrown out. If I show up during voting hours, then I'm either voting or suing, but I'm not waiting in line until after 8PM.

Second, this nonsense can only serve as yet more kindling for those who are already marshalling their forces to unleash litigation when election day arrives, or even before then. See also this post, and this related news story today about lost e-votes in Florida, or this story about alleged voter intimidation in Florida.

I realize of course that Louisiana had some other agenda items over the past few days, but there need to be some very public firings over this -- why couldn't the voting machines have been delivered prior to Ivan's arrival? Why can't they just rush a slew of absentee ballots to the polling places and have people vote that way?

UPDATE: The count is up to "at least 59 precincts" that did not have machines when the polls opened. Meanwhile, very preliminary results indicate the gay marriage ban will pass overwhelmingly (not surprsing, I suppose, given Louisiana's demographics). In addition, there were legal challenges in the works even before the "no voting machine" scandal (also not surprising, I suppose). Details here.