Vote early, vote often — but above all, vote carefully
dan tynan on Oct 21 2008 at 4:58 am | Filed under: Cringley, Infoworld, e-voting
It seems touch-screen voting machines in West Virginia have minds of their own. According to The Charleston Gazette, early voters in Putnam and Jackson Counties are reporting that when they vote for Democrats, their votes get switched to Republican candidates.
Like 81-year-old Calvin Thomas, who says:
"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."
So far, there are no reports of votes flipping in the other direction (though that doesn’t mean they didn’t). Voting again seemed to fix the problem for Thomas and others in the news reports. Of course, they caught the machines’ errors; there’s no way to know how many voters didn’t notice when their votes went to “the other dude.”
And of course, the good people of West Virginia are outraged. The governor has called a halt to early voting while the Federal Elections Commission investigates. Both major presidential candidates have expressed serious concern over the reliability of electronic voting.
Actually I just made that up. Nothing much appears to be happening at all. The Election Systems & Software machines that have caused problems in dozens of precincts around the nation are still in use, awaiting the nation’s choice for president. For the mainstream media it’s an old story that lacks sexy visuals and can’t be boiled down to 22 words or less.
So let me see if I have this straight. Alleged yet unproven instances of voter registration fraud = enormous threat to democracy. Actual vote fraud? Nothing to see here, please move along. Are we a Soviet republic yet?
When you vote this November, do me a favor. Request a paper ballot. Or if you can’t do that, double check your vote to make sure it registers the way you intended before you leave the booth. The future of our democracy depends on it.
Are you ticked off about voter and/or vote fraud? Post your thoughts below or e-mail me direct: dan (at) dantynan (dot) com.
This blog post originally appeared on Infoworld’s Notes From the Field, where it has been gathering conservative trolls for the past 24 hours. When did election integrity become a "partisan" issue?
Why on earth are the elections important when the elections do not give right to a common person to become a president?
“fraud” even in a non-legal-specific definition, would include some intentional misrepresentation or wrongdoing. The ACORN issue seems to have a bit more circumstancial evidence pointing in that direction than the electronic voting issue. However, at this point for both of them, I tend to follow Napoleon’s rule to “never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
@bradley: excellent advice. I suspect incompetence plays the bigger role in all things.
@fatima: depends on what you mean by “common.” I think you could define barack obama as “common” (as you could bill clinton, jimmy carter, or ronald reagan, to name three). none of these men came from backgrounds of privilege.
I’d also define sarah palin as common, but I mean that in a slightly different way. as in, inexceptional. I wouldn’t define the others in that way.
peace,
dt