Fred Grimm: Tiny town could be Waterloo for vote machines

[eomer]

Tiny town could be Waterloo for vote machines

BY FRED GRIMM

-snip-

Randy Wooten, owner of Randy's Karaoke Bar out on Highway 14 and one of three mayoral candidates, received no votes. Not even his own.

''He voted for himself. I watched him,'' said Roxanne Wooten, the candidate's wife. ''I was standing right behind him. And then I voted for him,'' she told me Monday.

Neither vote registered on the ES&S machine. Poinsett County election official insisted that their touch-screen machines were working just fine, that Waldenburg's improbable undervote was due to ``operator error.''

Not hardly, said Roxanne Wooten. She said, ``I noticed that the machine was acting jumpy.''

But she made sure she voted for her husband. It was the one vote that mattered.

Randy's two opponents split 36 votes. He came up empty.

-snip-

Full Article.

[truckin]

1. Nice find, this could be big.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. Kick!

and R, of course.

Paper Ballots now!

[havocmom]

3. Only one reason for the expense and trouble of voting machines

in a town where the mayoral race gets a total of 36 votes... to program results.

Hell, the PTA meetings at the schools I attended had more voters for chairman. Not too hard to screw up THOSE elections... a few pieces of paper and a careful secretary took care of the issue with indisputable accuracy.

Making communities THAT small buy or lease expensive machines is nothing more than a mandated payoff to the private companies that 'deliver Ohio'.

[The Count]

4. If only! The ES*S/Diebold brothers should be run out of town like the sharlatans

they are! And their snake oil devices dismantled and burned!

[Peace Patriot]

5. A vote here, a vote there--what does it matter?

A few votes here and there really don't matter that much compared to the billions of dollars poured through the fingers of the nation's election officials and legislators into the pockets of rightwing Bushite corporations. Just enrich them, and let them choose which votes should be counted, and they will "float all boats" and benefit the little people with "trickle down" medical care and jobs.

-----

"In January, civic activist Kindra Muntz started a petition drive toward a referendum to force Sarasota County to revert to a paper ballot system. (Not a paper trail or a paper receipt linked to the same wormy touch-screen software, she insisted, but a paper ballot system.)

"She succeeded, despite a lawsuit filed by Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb, who has demonstrated more interest in protecting the voting machine vendors' reputation than voters' intent."

[Pacifist Patriot]

6. I've met Kindra. I have incredible respect for her.

[mcg]

7. I voted on a Diebold machine, it checked someone I didn't vote for.

I alerted someone of this, they said to press the check to clear it which I did, but I wonder what was actually recorded, there's no way for me to know.
Another voter told me the same thing happened to her, the machine was displaying incorrect choices.
I've never seen this happen on an ATM machine.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=545&blogid=4

'Lassiter said that officials only have the word of the Wootens ...

On the night of the election, up to a dozen people telephoned him and told him they had voted for him, he said, but they won't come forward to protest against the results. "After a while, it just gets tiresome," Wooten said.'

This angers me greatly, the Wootens were not even provided a paper receipt
of how they voted. This could have proven that the machines are corrupted,
which is precisely why these bushbot scumbags don't provide paper receipts.

We should have protests, these treason against our country cannot stand.

These erroreous-voting machines must go!

[progressoid]

8. This could easily die if it isn't worked up the food chain.

[Stevepol]

9. There's got to be a way to sue over this, a multi-party suit.

RFK Jr.'s suit w/ Papanaonio is apparently a suit based on bad business practices, but this seems like a straight case of voter disenfranchisement and voting fraud.

What is the ACLU for if not to try cases where there's a national interest in defending civil liberties, those enshrined in the Constitution? How many people are there who feel strongly and have evidence to suggest that their election losses were a sham? Get those people together, ACLU, and sue the crap out of these companies.

If the ACLU can't sue in a case like this, they've become irrelevant it seems to me. There's no civil liberty more important than the right to vote and to have that vote counted fairly.

[John Q. Citizen]

11. The only problem is there is no explicit right to vote in the constitution. n/t

[buddysmellgood]

10. Nothing to see here. Move along. Just a glitch, a snaffoo, a natural twitch of democracy.

A hiccup. Operator error. Your too stupid to vote. move along.

[autorank]

12. Great find eomer..."Is it fraud yet?" n/t

[eridani]

13. This is NOT King County, Washington state

We have more than 1000 diffrent ballot styles, and need opscan. But less than 100 FRIGGING TOTAL VOTES? Why in bleeding hell would anyone not used paper ballots in small towns like this?