The Charleston Gazette reports still more ES&S iVotronic touch-screen vote flipping in WV, including reports now from Jackson, Putnam, Berkeley, Ohio, Monongalia, and Greenbrier Counties.
Add those to the reports of vote flipping on ES&S machines in at least four different states. We’re also trying to find a moment to report on votes flipping in other states (including NV) on the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) systems made by other private companies including Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic.
Today’s report mentions that these are older ES&S machines. We’ll again remind everyone that Dan Rather produced an hour-long investigative report two years ago in which he reported on the touch-screens that ES&S was using and how they were causing these same problems even then. No one recalled those machines and now they continue to flip votes.
The DNC and Barack Obama campaign now tell us they are doing something about these problems “behind the scenes,” they just won’t tell us what it is they are doing, and the machines continued to be used, and votes continue to flip in WV, so far always from Democratic to Republican, and officials continue to blame the voters…
…
Juan E. Gilbert, a professor at Auburn University’s Center for Governmental Services…says the ways voting screens are set up cause problems.
“Some voters touching screens roll their fingers down the screen, trying to touch the names of the people they want. It is human nature.”
People voting for Obama who do that,Gilbert said, may actually touch the area for McCain.
“But you cannot have John McCain losing votes to Barack Obama. If you touch McCain’s name at the top of the screen, it will not switch to Barack Obama.”
“This problem will keep occurring. Some voters notice. But a lot don’t pay attention and might not notice.”
CNN even ran a report last week (see video at right)suggesting the problem was due to voters accidentally touching the choice next to the one they are trying to vote for. That report doesn’t explain what happened in TN when an attempted vote for Obama lit up the choice for Cynthia McKinney five rows away.
It also defies what was shown in the Dan Rather report, as votes were seen flipping again and again, even when the neighboring candidate was not being touched at all by the voter.
But, either way, officials say “don’t worry”!…
“Voters can review their votes before a third screen comes up and says, ‘Is this the vote you want to make?’ Then, you have to hit the word ‘confirm’,” [Monongalia County Clerk Carye L.] Blaney said.
Um, problem with that? A Rice University study showed us, two years ago, that of those voters who do manage to check their review screens at the end of the long process (and the huge majority don’t), two-thirds of them don’t notice when their selections have been flipped to different candidates or initiative.
UPDATE 10/27/08: WV’s Secretary of State gives an award to ES&S Vice President, even as their machines fail across her state. Details here…
Previous BRAD BLOG stories on ES&S vote flipping and other failures follows below, along with steps you can take should this happen to you since, apparently, you’re on your own, and the DNC will not be calling for these machines to be removed, or for you to be allowed to vote on paper ballots instead…
Recent ES&S iVotronic Failures as covered by The BRAD BLOG:
- 10/18/08: ES&S Vote-Flipping Seen in 2 WV Counties
- 10/21/08: Election Filmmaker Sees Own Vote Flipped From Dem in TN
- 10/22/08: Candidate Names Missing on Final Review Screens in SC
- 10/22/08: Votes Reportedly Flip R to D in Decatur Cty, TN
- 10/23/08: Vote Flips 5 Times From D to R in Another WV County
- 10/24/08: Straight-Party Votes Flip D to R in TX
- 10/25/08: Screen Blanks Out, Another Obama Vote Lost in TN
- 10/26/08: DNC Claims They’re On it, Just Can’t Tell Us What They’re Doing
What to do if it happens to you:
- Call poll supervisors to observe the problem.
- Fill out a problem report.
- Refuse to vote on that machine.
- Request that the machine be taken out of service.
- Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be difficult in many cases).
- Tell other voters in line which machine it was and that they should NOT vote on that machine!
- Report it to county/town election office.
- Report it to the Secretary of State.
- Call local reporters and tell them the story.
- Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) and report it.
- Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.
- Raise holy hell.
And again, people, please bring a video camera/cell phone camera when you go to vote so you can document these problems on video tape, and then upload them to VideoTheVote.org and YouTube!
(Thanks to VelvetRevolution.us and TrueVote.us for help in compiling these recommendations!)
Wouldn’t it be nice if people loved their country enough to go to jail for a week or two in defense of our right to vote?
Wouldn’t it be nice if they said,
Game on.
Kick them over.
Don’t underestimate the legal penalties for such civil disobedience or the many thousands of dollars that each of those overpriced pieces of crap will be billed at.
But if the real penalties are known in advance
and if the poll workers refuse to take those machines which have been witnessed flipping votes permanently offline, then…?
Is the corrupt atmosphere in which Democrats reside pickling their brains? Is there some kind of group obsessive compulsive disorder going on with the Democratic party that they continue the same self-defeating patterns after multiple failures?
The Democratic Party is criminally negligent by not confronting the perils of electronic machines that artificially alter election results in favor of fascists.
It is astonishing that it takes Russia Today to deliver a report with the facts and intellectual honesty, something totally alien the overwhelmingly fascist media (the same one still broadcasting the debunked ACORN threat). If the media won’t do it, it really is up to bloggers as it has been in recently years. What to do:
— Set up pages on hubpage.com with words like “democrats” and “voting machines” and
CIA protégé “anderson cooper.” Put the heat on these lying propagandists.
— put up Blogger blogs about it,
— participate in such forums my new
BlogCatalog Group, and be sure to put many links back to BradBlog and BlackBoxVoting
— Create youtube videos about it. It is easy to make videos with any number of free programs such as Photostory 3, Windows Movie Maker, iMovie if you use Mac
— Set up MySpace, Facebook, Mixx, Bebo, Squidoo pages devoted to it.
— comment contrary views on extreme right-wing blogs.
— comment at YouTube on the videos on BradBlog. Right now, you’ll see that wingnuts are adding fascist propaganda on the comments underneath the ACORN video and the Russia Today video.
And So On. That would just be the beginning.
I’m talking about waging cyber guerrilla warfare against the mainstream media in order to overcome censorship of information relating to these attacks against democracy. “Be the media” is no longer enough. It now has to be “Beat the mainstream media.”
Scream holy hell if you see your vote flip. But be advised that a more sophisticated computer hack could flip votes to McCain, and still let you see Obama as your choice. It was demonstrated in the Hacking Democracy movie by security expert Harri Hursti. Benedict Arnold was elected and the polling lady burst into tears. Remember?
That’s why the video confirmation of this swindle is just the tip of the iceburg, the malfunction of functioning malware.
The map at Verified-Voting tells you all you will need to know about where and why the polls will be so far off come Nov. 4. Then we’ll be treated to a self-satisfied Democratic “leadership” crowing about how they squeaked out an election that should have been a blowout.
Yeah, behind the scenes, uhuh.
Where have I heard that before?
O yeah, back with “Count Every Vote in Ohio” Kerry.
Real, real effective.
We’re doomed.
Hey, would it be a lot of work to compile all the vote-flipping that’s been witnessed so far into some sort of table?
Y’know, like:
Date: 10/21/08 State: TX; County; (name)) # of vote-flips reported: _______. Witnessed by Poll worker: Y/N
It might be interesting.
What I want to know is, how can anyone be certain that REGARDLESS of whether or not people notice this error and try to correct it – that the flipped vote isn’t STILL being counted anyway by the machine? Seriously, is there any possible way to confirm this is NOT the case.
Go here and put “voting machines” in keywords to see how Barack Obama is addressing the issue:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/contact/
Rosencrantz–nope.
No way to at all confirm how the DRE machine will choose to count, or not count, your vote. In fact, your vote can even be mysteriously “dropped” in a certain race on the ES&S iVotronic machines, M.I.A., like we saw in Sarasota CD-13 in ’06. The election was so anomalously decimated that 18,000 votes registered no preference in that hotly contested race; 14% of the county’s votes–lost. Even after two recounts with nothing to count, two state audits with no paper to confirm, an FSU test, a GAO test, four or five lawsuits and a whitewashed GAO report, we STILL haven’t found ’em.
Over 300 citizens testified that they, too, saw their vote flip from D to R, or that they had trouble getting their vote to register for the Dem Candidate, Christine Jennings.
Their testimony is tragically mirrored in this just posted ’08 Video the Vote clip from West Virginia voter Virginia Methany:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5F-sXW6tCM
And check this out: terrible audio problems with this one, but Video the Vote managed to get a friendly S.O.E. in West Virginia to demonstrate, ON CAMERA, a VOTE FLIPPING scenario on one of his “poorly calibrated” machines. JUST POSTED:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9NSVUu8nk
Sorry about the poor audio, but here’s some more solid proof that this is NOT “fat finger syndrome” or “stupid voters” or “tin foil hat wearin’, conspiracy fodder” or any other nonsense that ES&S and their shills continue to peddle.
Hearya (#4)
Excellent point. And btw, that crying poll worker is now running for Volusia County Supervisor of Elections. Susan Pynchon, my hero and friend, who has a VERY good chance of beating her Republican opponent, Anne McFall, who has a history of stonewalling open, transparent elections in her county.
The filmmakers behind Hacking Democracy just crafted an excellent follow up piece on Susan’s campaign and her continuing battle to open up our elections process, here: (two 10 min. vid’s)
“People in Power/ pt 1.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DEQfEQ-lG4
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFhDxkOHrfI
Highly recommended viewing. (And Hearya, this piece includes the footage I got from Sarasota County’s Primary election of a Diebold Central Tabulator Manual Override. So you’re exactly right…OP SCANS are no solution.)
Sorry I meant this page below. Do a keyword search for “voting machines” and see what you get. This tells you about the Obama campaign strategy for dealing with the voting machine problem:
http://answercenter.barackobama...p_sid=Xgqiirhj
The Steelers and the United Steelworkers Union are knocking on doors in western PA to make sure that everyone has accurate information about Obama. The grassroots effort this man inspires is awesome. The AFL-CIO leadership thinks that Obama is the best candidate for labor in a very long time.
I had to share this:
AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka on Racism and Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...eature=related
Oy, Adam
What kind of pony and trap is this? I right clicked on the Obama link you gave in your post, put in ‘voting machines’ and nothing showed up. Did you give the right page, or was that a goose chase? We’re laying bets on this race. How much they been angus deaton on this election?
Guv
guv, there’s a line that says ‘0 results found’ or like that. I think that’s the point.
DNC Chairman Howard Dean was on the Maddow show this evening and she had several questions for him about the problems early voters are having including the voting machine problems. Early on she commented that (not verbatim but really close)’There seems to be a Democratic strategy about not talking about it, not talking about long lines at the polling places, efforts to disenfranchise voters, chaos at the polls, not to talk about it because you don’t want to risk discouraging people who might otherwise turn out to vote if they think their vote won’t count…’ He didn’t answer the question and launched into a response about how ‘we have fixed a lot of problems that started in 2000…’ BS answer.
Maddow pressed on and after getting answers that were non-responsive in the main asked if it wasn’t time for him or Obama or Biden to give a speech that was a call to duty. To tell people that there are going to be lines, people may challenge you … don’t be intimidated, this is an important election so get out there and vote. Dean was pathetic! He said people know they need to vote and we don’t need to tell them that. It was extraordinary, he just blew her off. Dean was wooden, uncomfortable and evasive as hell.
The non-response is a plan by the DNC and apparently Obama is on board.