Homer Simpson tried to warn us about electronic voting machines that changed votes for Obama into votes for McCain. Now, in West Virginia, voters are complaining that what happened to Homer in this clip happened to them. As Homer might say, “this can’t happen in West Virginia, Ohio maybe but not West Virginia.”
Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting have complained that machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they voted last week. They say that their electronic vote for “Barack Obama” kept flipping to “John McCain”. To make matter worse, it is a GOP controlled area.
County officials however blamed the voters: “People make mistakes more than machines,” said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.
Shelba Ketchum, a 69-year-old nurse, said “I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican,” she said. “I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.”
The machine clearly malfunctioned. In the video on the Simpsons, Ketchum was supposed to be sucked into the machine.
For the full story, click here.
I saw the movie: Boogie Man, on the life of Lee Atwater. It has some interesting footage and delves into the sociopathy of many in cheneybush crowd we know and love. It touches on their willingness to “change” votes and lie, lie, lie to win.
The technology available to them at that time is quite primitve compared to the less than one minute machine tampering at the poll that can be done now.
A theme of Lee’s was, “people vote their fears”. That sounds familiar! Once again I was struck by the primitive yet quite effective tools for
spreading the fear in Lee’s time. I went to an talk by “DARPA dude” (that’s what I call him) this week to learn about the latest techniques for manipulating and controlling individuals and groups. It was scary (and that was the unclassified version). So I am “hair on fire” worried about this election.
This is an interesting website with a toolkit for fighting election fraud and a listing of many of the “mistakes” in voting machines or “mistaken” attempts by officials to cage voters.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.html
Maybe RFK.Jr. is correct when he suggests that the election could already be stolen. There are already multiple reports of the machines in West Virginia switching Obama votes to McCain. It is not a quirk of the machines that somehow always makes a “mistake” that favors just one candidate.
If you want to steal an election, ensure that electronic voting machines are installed first. Traditional ballot stuffing sufficient to steal an election requires considerable logistical support and is hard to conceal, but if you have control of the voting machines you can do it all invisibly and silently with only a few programmers.
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…”
I’ve been complaining about paperless voting machines for several years now, concerned that in the event of a recount there will be no means of verifying somebody’s vote. How hard is it to construct a machine that provides a paper copy that verifies your vote? We can put lotto machines in every convenient store which spit out paper receipts all day long, but we can’t do this for voting machines used once every few years?
There have been independent university studies which have proven these electronic machines can be hacked quite easily. We need more than “trust us, it works”.
To maintain our collective sanity, or maybe to hold terror at bay, we depend on the goodness of our constitutional system to ensure that eventually the right things will be done. This despite the constancy of this administration’s assault on our constitution via an illegal war, shredding of habeas corpus, spying on our citizenry and torturing our purported enemies. This names only a few of the assaults on our freedoms that have been perpetrated in the last eight years. I’ve no doubt that the overwhelming majority of people on this site, including myself, will exercise our right to vote and hope that this will dislodge these criminals from the their trappings of power. What will we do to maintain our collective sanity and hold terror at bay if this presidential election is again stolen? What if the pretense of constitutional democracy can no longer be sustained? I lack the intelligence and wisdom to provide an answer.
rafflaw,
10/4 on the MSM.
JT,
We just think voters are part of the election. Diebold took care of that in 2000! The Ghost in the Machine.
This may be an example of the early voting concept will actually allow additional time for the Obama team to address these abuses that will continue during the balance of this campaign. It is amazing that we get our more cogent political statemenst from our cartoons than we do our main stream media.
““People make mistakes more than machines,” said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.”
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Well we should all rejoice that they even have machines in WVa. Last time I was there the voting had to stop because they exhausted the supply of charcoal and the birch bark got wet. In fairness it was pretty difficult to make heads or tails of the votes, what with all those “X”‘s used for signatures. (I know I’m sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
You are so short sighted Jill. Diebold is working on the next generation of election advances: the voterless election. Embrace the future, Jill.
“People make mistakes more than machines,” said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.
Well thank goodness! I thought people programed the machines (although I would call that kind of thing a “mistake on purpose”