Reply #31: Touch screens...and we had an interesting experience... [View All]

[Sancho]

My machine worked ok. More importantly, my wife was at another machine across the room and I heard her complain loudly, "All I want to do is vote for Kerry and Castor!" Apparently, after voting for 10 screens of candidates (judges, etc.)...the review screen reversed her democratic votes and she kept "revoting" and it kept on defaulting to the Republican straight ticket! She kept on complaining to the poll workers for 5 minutes after I went outside until they 1.) cut the machine off to take it out of circulation, 2.) rebooted it and declared it was working correctly, 3.) let her "revote" at a different machine 4.) offered no explanation for what to do about the "data cards" already submitted from that machine. We were very early in the morning at the first of the line. I'll bet that machine was back in use as soon as we left!

Hacking tabulators is one thing, but a random machine that reversed votes or a program that defaulted to Bush every 20th person, etc...would be all that was needed to swing Florida! Different "cheating" could be hypothesized if raw poll data were available.