MSNBC just blamed the vote flips in WV on

[Subdivisions]

voter error and machine calibration, saying that 90% of the time it's the voter inaccurately touching the screen or that the machine is out of calibration. While acknowledging that voter registation fraud is common, there was no attempt to state that electronic voting machines could be programmed to flip votes.

[NMDemDist2]

1. we have touch screens at work for a cashier system

they suck and go out of calibration daily

[RoyGBiv]

19. Yup ...

That's the first thing I'd do when I'd start a shift ... and then do it again a few hours later on a busy day.

This is one of my major complaints about the things. During heavy use, they become uncalibrated quickly.

[baldguy]

23. But when you press the "5", does it ALWAYS read a "2"?

And never the other way around?

Simple random chance would show that for any given set of screens, the odds of it flipping one way are equal to it flipping the other way. But all the vote flips are FROM Democrat TO Republican.

Funny how that works, huh?

[livelongandprosper]

2. This is incredible.

Why dod we use these machines at all? Why can't we do it like Canada or other modern democracies.
Paper pen hand count. It works and it's virtually impossible to cheat.

[klyon]

11. never heard of "stuffing the ballot box"?

I am not sure we have ever had a 100% clean election.

[stillcool]

26. 100% clean is not the same..

as millions of votes lost. It kills me when people suggest that 'voter fraud', is in any way comparable to the vulnerabilities and inaccuracies of our voting systems. How many cases of 'voter fraud' have been prosecuted? What are these charges based on? There are simple measures to fix this election mess, yet people are content to have their votes stolen because 'nothing is 100%'.

[klyon]

30. I'm talking about election fraud

just the other day I was watching the LBJ biography on PBS, he was thought to have cheated to get his start in politics (not sure what office). Suppressing the vote has been with us for a long time along with the days of smoke filled back rooms.

[stillcool]

32. Suppressing the vote..

has been going on since 1850 probably, when all white males were allowed to vote. Purging voters by the millions, and changing state wide elections through insecure electronic voting systems is a little different, don't you think?

edit to add...

1790 Only white male adult property-owners have the right to vote.

1810 Last religious prerequisite for voting is eliminated.

1850 Property ownership and tax requirements eliminated by 1850. Almost all adult white males could vote.
1855 Connecticut adopts the nation's first literacy test for voting. Massachusetts follows suit in 1857. The tests were implemented to discriminate against Irish-Catholic immigrants.

1870 The 15th Amendment is passed. It gives former slaves the right to vote and protects the voting rights of adult male citizens of any race.

1889 Florida adopts a poll tax. Ten other southern states will implement poll taxes.
1890 Mississippi adopts a literacy test to keep African Americans from voting. Numerous other states—not just in the south—also establish literacy tests. However, the tests also exclude many whites from voting. To get around this, states add grandfather clauses that allow those who could vote before 1870, or their descendants, to vote regardless of literacy or tax qualifications.

1913 The 17th Amendment calls for members of the U.S. Senate to be elected directly by the people instead of State Legislatures.
1915 Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement (1910). In Guinn v. United States the Supreme Court rules that the clause is in conflict with the 15th Amendment, thereby outlawing literacy tests for federal elections.

1920 The 19th Amendment guarantees women's suffrage.
1924 Indian Citizenship Act grants all Native Americans the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections.

1944 The Supreme Court outlaws "white primaries" in Smith v. Allwright (Texas). In Texas, and other states, primaries were conducted by private associations, which, by definion, could exclude whomever they chose. The Court declares the nomination process to be a public process bound by the terms of 15th Amendment.

1957 The first law to implement the 15th amendment, the Civil Rights Act, is passed. The Act set up the Civil Rights Commission—among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.

1960 In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (Alabama) the Court outlaws "gerrymandering."
1961 The 23rd Amendment allows voters of the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections.
1964 The 24th Amendment bans the poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections.
1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., mounts a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, to draw national attention to African-American voting rights.
1965 The Voting Rights Act protects the rights of minority voters and eliminates voting barriers such as the literacy test. The Act is expanded and renewed in 1970, 1975, and 1982.
1966 The Supreme Court, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, eliminates the poll tax as a qualification for voting in any election. A poll tax was still in use in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia.
1966 The Court upholds the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach.

1970 Literacy requirements are banned for five years by the 1970 renewal of the Voting Rights Act. At the time, eighteen states still have a literacy requirement in place. In Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court upholds the ban on literacy tests, which is made permanent in 1975. Judge Hugo Black, writing the court's opinion, cited the "long history of the discriminatory use of literacy tests to disenfranchise voters on account of their race" as the reason for their decision.
1971 The 26th amendment sets the minimum voting age at 18.
1972 In Dunn v. Blumstein, the Supreme Court declares that lengthy residence requirements for voting in state and local elections is unconstitutional and suggests that 30 days is an ample period.

1995 The Federal "Motor Voter Law" takes effect, making it easier to register to vote.

2003 Federal Voting Standards and Procedures Act requires states to streamline registration, voting, and other election procedures.

[klyon]

34. I'm just saying the system has never been right or secure

In the 90's my vote was suppressed. I didn't realize what was going on until 2000 and I learned about chad and found out the the machines in my minority part of town where never emptied from the voting station.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

3. I SAW THIS LAME REPORT LAST NIGHT

B.S.

[Subdivisions]

7. The thing is that MSNBC has this election irregularities hotline they

want people to call to report them. Now why in the hell would I want to call in to report an election irregularity, such as having my vote flipped, to a company that has a vested interest in mcsame winning and who daily promotes mcpalin by carrying their rallies live?

[Subdivisions]

13. Here is the report from CNN:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICl-bI927rM

[CoffeeCat]

4. What about the flips in New Mexico?

Doesn't New Mexico have optical scanners that read paper ballots?

It was discovered that many Dems voting a straight-party ticket had their Presidential choice flipped to McCain.

Those weren't touch screens.

Snopes.com even says it's true!

http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/straightticket.asp

Edited to add: The snopes story says that the NM "glitch" was fixed--but what about
the other states that read paper ballots on those optical scanners??????

[NavyDavy]

18. I voted absentee for Obama/Biden I marked straight Dem then

I also filled in the circle next to their names.....I know it probably won't count that one but if it comes down to a hand count there will be no mistake who I support....

[Ms. Toad]

27. It sounds as if you've already turned in your ballot,

But for those who haven't - if you don't trust (or don't understand) how your state requires straight party voting to be handled, just skip it and mark every race individually. It's much safer than doing what may be treated as an overvote or a cancellation of your straight party vote.

If you mix the two kind of votes (straight and mark-individual-candidates), the machine could well be programmed (either default, or to comply with state law) to do things you didn't intend to do - like to ignore your straight party selection once you mark any individual candidate, or to ignore votes in any race which would appear to have two votes (one, by virtue of the straight party vote and a second by virtue of hand selection.

The important thing is to get your vote to count the first time it runs through the machine. Hand counts are rare events, and if you mark your ballot initially in a way the machine doesn't understand you may waste your vote because it never gets to a recount/hand count.

(Note - there MAY be states in which straight party voting skips some offices - in which case you would need to mark those offices separately. Know your law, and read your ballot.)

[rcrush]

5. I think touch screens just suck

Plus people are stupid to. If you have to deal with thousands of people a day a good chunk of them cant work an etch a sketch much less a voting machine or anything with a touch screen on it.

But I think thats why they started using them cause its easier for retards to fuck up with.

[Ian David]

6. When you try to vote Democratic, the machine shouts, "Bad touch! Bad touch!" n/t

[meegbear]

8. If it's not "calibrated" then it's NOT THE VOTER'S FAULT!

[napi21]

9. I watch the demo the official from WV did yesterday. I blame the

screen layout too! There's litterally NO SPACE between the boxes, and depending on the angle you are viewing the screen, I can see how a voter would touch just a little too high and have the vote register for the top name instead of the one just below that.

[Green Mountain Dem]

10. Makes one wonder....

who designed the screen layout!!!

[Subdivisions]

12. TYT video about WV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09X-aYRad2E

[Junkdrawer]

16. "Put it back on paper...For the love of God, put it back on paper..."

Well said...

:applause:

[napi21]

15. Maybe the lady who designed the butterfly ballot in Fl moved? n/t

[Supersedeas]

20. and the SPACE would be a mechanism that the PROGRAMERS control

[sallyseven]

14. BS We asll use the ATM machines at teh bank

We all know how it is done. We sre not stupid like MSNBC daytime.

[napi21]

21. There's very little comparrison between the two machines.

I watched a program a while ago that covered that very topic. I can't rememberif it was 60 minutes or a cable special, but they were talking to designers & programmers of ATM's and how they differed from the DRE's. There are hundreds if not thousands of security measures associated with ATM's. They are also designed & built under very high quality control guidlines and use reliable, though expensive, components. DRE's are the exact opposite! They are built as cheaply as possible, by untrained and poorly paid workers, in foreign country facilities, with very little QC!

When they were first purchased for voting here in Ga. (we were one of the first, if not THE 1st State to use them statewide), I believed the same as you. I've used a computer for 16+ years. I've used an ATM since they were first installed. I've NEVER had a calcualation problem with any of them! Although the job of recording votes and tabulating the totals sounds like such an easy andtotally uncomplicated task, how could anyone screw it up? Well, I've learned a LOT since 2000!

[tjwash]

17. Right...when the first mcsame voter comes out and says the machine registered Obama I'll believe it.

[renate]

22. apparently only Democrats have trouble touching the correct place on the screen

:eyes:

[depakid]

24. Bullshit

I watched the guy in West Virginia demonstrate it- that was as clear an instance of vote switching as anyone might imagine.

And this sort of deal is not going to stop until a LOT of people end up with stiff fines and prison sentences.

[brooklynite]

25. CNN had a video clip yesterday...

...showing how it might happen. The names are close together, and if the top of your finger grazes the name above (McCain) it will lock onto that and not let you select the one on the bottom (Obama).

I know I'm going to annoy the conspiracy theorists here, but if you were going to develop a vote-stealing system that only changed a handful of votes (otherwise you'd have hundreds if not thousands of complaints in each County), wouldn't you have it change the vote in the background and just show the voter the name they WANTED to pick?

[stillcool]

28. Have you read any of the studies..

done on the vulnerability issues and inaccuracies of voting systems? These are just a few of the reports, but do you think these are 'conspiracy theories'? And how many votes is enough to cause concern?

The Brennan Center at New York Law School
http://brennan.3cdn.net/a56eba8edf74e9e12e_r2m6b86s2.pdf

University of Connecticut
http://www.votetrustusa.org/pdfs/Diebold%20Folder/uconn-report-os.pdf

University of California, Berkeley
http://w2.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/infosheets2006/AccuVoteOS.pdf

Ohio Secretary of State..EVEREST report..
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/upload/everest/00-SecretarysEVERESTExecutiveReport.pdf

[brooklynite]

35. I accept "vulnerability"...

but nobody's explained a systemic method of flipping votes in sufficient quantity to affect an election with sufficient individual small variation to not be obvious, taking into account each County's different approach to ballot layout, candidate names, etc.

All this, by the way, doesn't address the question of why the conspirators would develop a system that voters would be able to see and complain about.

[stillcool]

37. the incidents of vote flipping have been...

documented for a while now..probably since HAVA legislated computerized voting. I believe 18 states are still using paperless DRE's, so those are probably the only states where 'vote flipping' is occurring. I am not educated in the inner workings of computers, corrupted code etc., but the studies are there for anyone to understand the various means used to alter a state-wide election. The Brennan Study even goes as far as estimating how many people are needed to carry out the different methods. Whether the vote is flipped on the screen, or through corrupted code inside the computer, I just think after 6 years it's kind of funny that people still dismiss this stuff as 'glitches'.

[billyoc]

29. I agree. When they steal votes, they don't display the results on the screen.

[Vinca]

31. Okay, so assuming MSNBC is correct, why the hell do we have to

put up with broken machines when paper and a pencil works just as well? Damn this makes me mad.

[Bluebear]

33. If they're too stupid to use the machine, they're too stupid to vote.

Wow...it's even nauseating to TRY to type something a Republican would say.

[Beetwasher]

36. And Yet It's ALWAYS IN THE REPUBLICAN'S FAVOR

n/t