WV Voting Machines Switching Votes?

[LadyTevar]

Charleston WV Saturday Gazette-Mail

Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes
Jackson County touch-screens switched votes, 3 residents say


At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.

When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.

On her third try, Matheney managed to cast votes for both Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman, Democratic candidates for the two open seats.

Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.

"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.

"When I hollered about that, the girl who worked there said, 'Push it again.' I pushed Obama again and it stayed there. Then, the machine did the same thing for other candidates.

"Why didn't she [the polling clerk] tell me before I even used the machine that might happen? And how many people, especially my age, didn't notice that?

At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.

When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.

On her third try, Matheney managed to cast votes for both Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman, Democratic candidates for the two open seats.

Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.

"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.

"When I hollered about that, the girl who worked there said, 'Push it again.' I pushed Obama again and it stayed there. Then, the machine did the same thing for other candidates.

"Why didn't she [the polling clerk] tell me before I even used the machine that might happen? And how many people, especially my age, didn't notice that?

"Jackson County is a Republican county. I am a registered Republican, but I have been voting Democrat since the 1990s."

Thomas, who brought his daughter with him to the polls, said she had the same problem.

"After I finished, my daughter voted. When she pushed Obama, it went to McCain. It happened to her the same way it happened to me. If the poll worker knew that, why didn't she tell me before I even pushed the button?"

Deputy Secretary of State Sarah Bailey said, "When we received a call about this, we immediately called the county and told them to recalibrate the machines to make sure the finger-touch [area] lines up with the ballot.

"Sometimes machines can become miscalibrated when they are moved from storage facilities to early voting areas," Bailey said Friday. "We get a couple of calls about this each election year."

Most voting machines in most counties do work properly, Bailey added.

Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright said, "After we got a call from the Secretary of State's Office, we recalibrated the machine. We had already voted over 400 people with no problems."

Voting problems occur when voters touch the screen, Waybright said, but do not put their fingers inside boxes for their candidates.

Waybright blamed the problem on voters.

"People make mistakes more than the machines," he said, "but I went in yesterday and recalibrated the machines. We are doing everything we can not to disenfranchise anybody."

Matheney remains concerned.

"Leaving the polling place," she said, "I wondered how many voters might not have noticed that their vote was switched on the machine."

[LadyTevar]

It gets worse. Today's Sunday Gazette-Mail:

Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.

This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain".

That's two counties reporting problems with Early Voting using the touch machines.

[Tribun]

I find it more interesting that the "errors" only favor McCain.

That that I want to accuse anyone, but it is interesting...

[RedImperator]

People need to go to jail for this bullshit, because the only way a voting machine gets fucked up this badly is through malice or criminal incompetence. How many million ATMs are there in this country? Can you imagine the reaction if they made errors like this?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Who designed these damn machines? Diebold or some successor?

[Shroom Man 777]

Hasn't this happened ever since the 2000 elections? Haven't these fuck-ups been always disadvantageous to Democrats and Democrat-voters? Whatever happened to that fool me once, fool me twice, fool me thrice saying?

Man, you people should take to the streets over this nonsense.

[Yogi]

I'm kind of surprised they made the fraud this blatant. The votes could have been changed behind the scenes and no one really would have known any better.

[Shroom Man 777]

It is a testament to the greatness of America and her wonderful people. USA! USA!

If Obama ends up losing no thanks to this, he'd just concede gracefully and hand the Presidency over to ole Biff McCain - and no one would contest it, there won't be any protests in the streets or anything at all. Man, your democracy sucks. You just end up taking it up the ass.

[General Zod]

"Sometimes machines can become miscalibrated when they are moved from storage facilities to early voting areas," Bailey said Friday. "We get a couple of calls about this each election year."

Most voting machines in most counties do work properly, Bailey added.

Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright said, "After we got a call from the Secretary of State's Office, we recalibrated the machine. We had already voted over 400 people with no problems."

Voting problems occur when voters touch the screen, Waybright said, but do not put their fingers inside boxes for their candidates.

How in the holy fuck can this be a calibration issue? I can't think of any other touch screen devices that are so sensitive just moving them around will cause the display to jump from one selection to the other. If it legitimately is a calibration issue the designers deserve to get slammed with massive fines at a minimum for gross negligence.

[White Haven]

First off, if it's a calibration issue, jail whoever's doing the calibration pending an investigation. 'Oh, I made a mistake while setting up this voting machine that causes it to favour one part,' is as transparent a lie as I've heard this week. Secondly...if your touch screens suck THAT BADLY, then, radical thought here, stop using touch screens. The idea of 'buttons next to a screen' is not new, and if 'new' fails,' fuck 'new.'

[Aratech]

I read this, and then I get a damn Palin "A proven Maverick!" bullshit thing at the bottom of the page.

Makes me sick.

This, folks, is why I don't trust electronic voting machines any further than I can throw them.

[Ekiqa]

Go back to paper and a pencil mark in a circle.

Simple, easy, and difficult to mess up.

[Stormbringer]

People need to go to jail for this bullshit, because the only way a voting machine gets fucked up this badly is through malice or criminal incompetence. How many million ATMs are there in this country? Can you imagine the reaction if they made errors like this?

That assumes that the quality issue is solely a result of the companies making these machines. I'd be surprised if the election boards spent a fraction of the time and money on these voting machines that banks do. ATMs are a huge business with plenty of capital backing it; election machinery is a crap shoot at every level. As we've seen with ill-designed punch-cards machines and confusing ballot designs, there's an appalling number of ways this could be screwed up. Most of these electronic voting machines were rushed onto the market as a reaction to Florida, which cuts down on the amount of time in which they could be quality checked. They're screwed up, we know that, and it should be fixed but so far I've yet to see the government on any level seriously putting money into fixing them.

Personally, I'd like to see a serious effort made to set national standards for voting equipment and process, serious funding to make sure it can be afforded, and this hamlet by hamlet system ditched. We've got an archaic and underfunded voting system and problems like this are a direct result of that.

I'm kind of surprised they made the fraud this blatant. The votes could have been changed behind the scenes and no one really would have known any better.

I'm sure you'll be offering proof of this claim?

You do realize how absurd it is to claim that every Diebold employee who worked on the design and programming of these machine didn't notice or care about fraud? Despite the big-wig's comments, which are definitely understandable as the bravado of supporters, there has been zero reports of this being designed in.

And you do realize that, contrary to the tin foil hat brigade's assertions, the actual electoral processes are designed to be transparent and open to both non- and bi-partisan scrutiny. There's virtually no chance for those kind of backroom shenanigan's to go on unobserved.

I'm not saying fraud hasn't gone on or can't. But for fuck's sake I'm sick of people like you assuming that rampant, one-sided villiany is going on with out a seriously considering the evidence.

[Haruko]

So how long before the Republicans start scrambling to get this fixed?

And this video of Homer Simpson trying to vote for Obama is so appropriate for this story.

[SirNitram]

Data, proof. That is at the core of this.

Link to a bit on an error there for ten years back, yet only admitted to after the Ohio primaries this year? Mmhmm. And of course, the 'Vote switch' was chronic in Ohio in 2004.

So. The choice is between sabotage of the vote or a bunch of bunglers who we now know are so bad at this they fuck up elections. You'd think a nation so fetishizing 'democracy' would object to that.

[General Zod]

Data, proof. That is at the core of this.

Link to a bit on an error there for ten years back, yet only admitted to after the Ohio primaries this year? Mmhmm. And of course, the 'Vote switch' was chronic in Ohio in 2004.

So. The choice is between sabotage of the vote or a bunch of bunglers who we now know are so bad at this they fuck up elections. You'd think a nation so fetishizing 'democracy' would object to that.

As much as the RNC are jumping all over Acorn's shit for suspected voter fraud, I'm rather amazed they haven't been giving this issue far more attention than it seems to be getting.

[Tribun]

Data, proof. That is at the core of this.

Link to a bit on an error there for ten years back, yet only admitted to after the Ohio primaries this year? Mmhmm. And of course, the 'Vote switch' was chronic in Ohio in 2004.

So. The choice is between sabotage of the vote or a bunch of bunglers who we now know are so bad at this they fuck up elections. You'd think a nation so fetishizing 'democracy' would object to that.

As much as the RNC are jumping all over Acorn's shit for suspected voter fraud, I'm rather amazed they haven't been giving this issue far more attention than it seems to be getting.

Of course they didn't, since this is something that favors the GOP.

[SirNitram]

Data, proof. That is at the core of this.

Link to a bit on an error there for ten years back, yet only admitted to after the Ohio primaries this year? Mmhmm. And of course, the 'Vote switch' was chronic in Ohio in 2004.

So. The choice is between sabotage of the vote or a bunch of bunglers who we now know are so bad at this they fuck up elections. You'd think a nation so fetishizing 'democracy' would object to that.

As much as the RNC are jumping all over Acorn's shit for suspected voter fraud, I'm rather amazed they haven't been giving this issue far more attention than it seems to be getting.

Why would they? The reported incidents with these machines are, rather impressively, one way. I'm not sure what possible innocent programming bug could create such a partisan error.

[General Zod]

Why would they? The reported incidents with these machines are, rather impressively, one way. I'm not sure what possible innocent programming bug could create such a partisan error.

True, but you'd expect them to at least want to keep up the illusion of having a sense of integrity; although I suppose it's not really their top priority these days.

[Stormbringer]

Data, proof. That is at the core of this.

Link to a bit on an error there for ten years back, yet only admitted to after the Ohio primaries this year? Mmhmm. And of course, the 'Vote switch' was chronic in Ohio in 2004.

So. The choice is between sabotage of the vote or a bunch of bunglers who we now know are so bad at this they fuck up elections. You'd think a nation so fetishizing 'democracy' would object to that.

Because for all we have a fetish for democracy, America is a nation of lazy, tightwad bastards. Despite these prominent, embarrassing problems there's been no real outrage or desire to spend money to sort out the voting process. It's still the same county by country, lower than lowest bidder system that we've had for decades. The most that's been done has been the application of band-aids, which have in turn created further problems and contradictions. It's apathy on the part of voters and a cynical desire on the part of the political parties not to rock the boat.

As much as the RNC are jumping all over Acorn's shit for suspected voter fraud, I'm rather amazed they haven't been giving this issue far more attention than it seems to be getting.

Because they won Ohio?

Both parties jumped on Florida when they had something at stake. The only factor seriously at work here is self-interest. Neither are going to rock the boat for actual reform

[Stormbringer]

Data, proof. That is at the core of this.

Link to a bit on an error there for ten years back, yet only admitted to after the Ohio primaries this year? Mmhmm. And of course, the 'Vote switch' was chronic in Ohio in 2004.

So. The choice is between sabotage of the vote or a bunch of bunglers who we now know are so bad at this they fuck up elections. You'd think a nation so fetishizing 'democracy' would object to that.

As much as the RNC are jumping all over Acorn's shit for suspected voter fraud, I'm rather amazed they haven't been giving this issue far more attention than it seems to be getting.

Why would they? The reported incidents with these machines are, rather impressively, one way. I'm not sure what possible innocent programming bug could create such a partisan error.

Proof of that? Unless you're suggesting that Diebold is exclusively staffed by criminally minded Republicans?

[SirNitram]

Proof of that? Unless you're suggesting that Diebold is exclusively staffed by criminally minded Republicans?

Proof of the one-sided nature of the errors in 2004? Okey-dokey. Rolling Stone, complete with citations

Of all the documented cases with full citations here, I happen to like this the most:

In the state's most notorious incident, an electronic machine at a fundamentalist church in the town of Gahanna recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry168. In that precinct, however, there were only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up169.

Loaves and Fishes!

[Stormbringer]

Proof of that? Unless you're suggesting that Diebold is exclusively staffed by criminally minded Republicans?

Proof of the one-sided nature of the errors in 2004?

Proof of the conspiracy you claim is behind it.

[SirNitram]

Proof of that? Unless you're suggesting that Diebold is exclusively staffed by criminally minded Republicans?

Proof of the one-sided nature of the errors in 2004?

Proof of the conspiracy you claim is behind it.

And what would you take? The owner of the company declaring he'd deliver the state? The massive, one-sided errors? The fact an error has been in the systems for ten years.. But is only just now reported?

Of course, I could simply point out your paranoid schizophrenia is acting up. The post where you started demanding I show evidence of this conspiracy was not alleging conspiracy: It alleged that I cannot fathom how you get such a one-sided error(But ultimately, even if done on purpose, requires no vast conspiracy; it requires at most a few shady coders), it also alleged a 'Why look a gift horse in the mouth' philosophy for the GOP.

Of course, you are free to babble on what you think was claimed.

[The Romulan Republic]

I am so glad I'm not casting an electronic vote.

I've been saying for months that the Republicans were going to resort to fraud. This is just confirmation of the inevitable. The only question is weather Obama will fight it, or play the GOP's bitch and fold like John Kerry.