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MO-SEN: Machine Records Dem Vote For GOP
Reader PW writes:
My wife just came home from voting here in Webster Groves MO. She used the electronic touch-screen voting system. . . She touched Claire McCaskill's picture and the machine recorded a vote for Jim Talent. She then called one of the people running the polling center who helped her correct the problem. My wife then had to call the person over another time after it recorded her vote a Republican again. In her frustration she asked the person who was responsible for the design of this system. The polling person leaned in very close to my wife and whispered, "We're f----d."
The Missouri Senate race is perhaps the closest in the country, and polls are being watched very closely, by both sides, for any errors or malfeasance.
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In the past, we only had to contend with the fact that votes were under-counted in St. Louis. Thanks to Diebold, all votes are now counted - just not in the way the voter intended them to be.
November 7, 2006 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like it worked the way it was designed to work. :-)
Best, Terry
November 7, 2006 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm ready to fight these bastards. Time to start employing scorched Earth tactics. Start filing complaints NOW.
November 7, 2006 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is something to look forward to this evening. I live in Webster and will vote after work. My wife voted this morning on an electronic machine. She said it went well except for some confusion on the part of one of the poll workers about how to make the machine run.
I'm sure Gov Blunt's newly appointed head of elections in St Louis County will take all of these complaints seriously. After all, it only took Secretary of State Robin Carnahan three attempts to get county elections staff to accept that the law does not require photo ID.
November 7, 2006 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
This bug is well-known and seems to appear everywhere touch-screen voting machines are used. Basically it's a problem with the touch-screen interface program. (If it were intentionally trying to steal the vote, it would not tell you it was doing so.)
Of course, the curious thing is that this bug seems to only appear when Democratic votes are changed to Republican...
November 7, 2006 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now why would a machine do that? Are the Talent votes showing up as McCaskill's are or just visa versa? If so, why would a machine malfunction just in one specific candidate's favor?
I would hope democratic poll watchers, not just in Missouri but across the nation, are keeping detailed logs of the malfunctions and how they break down by party...
November 7, 2006 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
These voting machine errors are pretty striking, given that Diebold makes ATM machines that see heavy use, every single day, and are incredibly reliable. I never try to withdraw money from my checking account and have the machine take it from the wrong account. Never. Even if the machines also make the opposite error (record a Democratic vote as Republican) - something I've never seen reported anywhere - with equal frequency we can't have true confidence in a buggy voting system that is essentially a black box. We have no idea what is going on in these machines, and we can't check them. There must be a hard copy, period. It's a simple fix, and I think that honest people of all political tendencies would support it.
November 7, 2006 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The scorched earth tactic isn't to file complaint but to take a hammer to these machines to force a paper ballot. That voters haven't resorted to this in Ohio yet is, quite honestly, astounding to me.
November 7, 2006 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I voted in Webster Groves earlier today and there wasn't any PHOTO of the candidates from which to select. It was just the name. I voted for McCaskill, there was a little green check by her *name*, and it was printed on the paper next to the screen (ok, it still not have been counted, but whatever...). My point is that I suppose it's possible that different machines would have different interfaces, but under the jurisdiction of the same election authority? Something's wrong with that story.
November 7, 2006 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink