By our count, Virginia is now the 7th state to report touch-screen voting flipping in the 2014 election (though we may have missed a few in Pennsylvania and elsewhere).

During Early Voting, prior to today’s mid-term, we’ve covered 100% unverifiable touch-screen votes reportedly flipping on screen in Texas (D to R), in Illinois (R to D), in Tennessee (NO to YES on anti-choice initiative), in Maryland (R to D) and in Arkansas (unclear which direction the votes were flipping in several different counties), and in North Carolina, where votes were said to be flipping from D to R in the crucial, neck-and-neck U.S. Senate race there.

Now, “Republicans and Democrats alike” are reporting votes flipping in a U.S. House race in Virginia Beach and Newport News, and one of the Republican candidates involved has supplied a video tape of the flipping votes cast on the town’s Diebold AccuVote touch-screen systems…

According to The Virginia-Pilot today:

Here’s the video posted along with the article above…

As we have reported many times over the years, and again in several of our reports this year (beginning with our first vote-flipping report of the season when touch-screen votes were reportedly flipping D to R in Texas and R to D in Illinois), officials usually chalk these problems up to calibration issues with the touch-screen itself. That is most likely the case, as we’ve previously explained, since any effort to steal votes on touch-screen systems would be much more effective by simply registering the vote on screen as the voter intends, and then recording it any way a bad guy might like inside the system. Rigging an election in that way is far more effectively and virtually impossible to detect.

That said, it’s certainly possible there are lousy or dumb hackers out there. Either way, the larger point, even when the system work as designed, is that touch-screen voters are 100% unverifiable, as we’ve been pointing out for more than a decade now.

The person who posted the video above, who goes by @TheConservVoice on Twitter, adds a comment at YouTube to say:

While the poster’s description of the problem still does not rule out touch-screen calibration issues, there is no way to know either way when voting on such systems.

This voter’s claim however that this problems is found “always benefiting the Democrats” is patently false. In fact, reports of votes flipping from Democrats to Republicans (and others) have been far more prevalent over the years. We know, because we’ve been forced to report them over and over (and over) again as they’ve happened over the years.

But, again, that doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t happen to any voter, which is why we’ve been calling for bans on this type of horrible, unverifiable e-voting system for years — even back when rightwinger Andrew Breitbart used to endlessly mock us on Twitter for doing so, back when Republicans like him generally believed reports of touch-screen votes flipping were little more than a “liberal conspiracy theory” by “sore losers” or some such.

We thank the Virginia Beach voter in this case for having the presence of mind to take video of the problem, as we have long recommended. While we’ve shown many such videos over the years, in the early days, as far back as 2004, Republicans and Election Officials would either ignore them, or simply claim it didn’t happen at all, even when videos and countless reports from voters revealed otherwise.

If this year’s reports are any indication, it appears Rightwingers finally don’t think the issue is simply being made up “Democrat sore losers” any more, and that’s very good news. Welcome to the fight for actual election integrity!

Unfortunately, like person who posted the YouTube video above — who also wrote “PATRIOTS OF AMERICA….. Don’t let voter fraud continue! This may happen to you one day!” — it seems many of those folks still have a lot to learn about the difference between “voter fraud” and election fraud (and voting machine failure).

Here’s a round-up of just our recent coverage of touch-screen vote-flipping reports during the 2014 mid-term general elections. (Search The BRAD BLOG’s archives for scores more over the past 10+ years):

10/24/2014: “E-Votes Flip D to R in Texas, R to D in Illinois: More Trouble With Touch-Screens (2014 Edition)”
10/24/2014: “Touch-Screen Votes Flip ‘No’ to ‘Yes’ on Abortion Amendment to State Constitution in TN”
10/28/2014: “Déjà Vu All Over Again. Again. – Touch-Screen Votes Flipping and My Appearance on Thom Hartmann TV This Week [VIDEO]”
10/29/2014: “Unverifiable Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Systems Reportedly Flipping R to D in Maryland”
10/31/2014:“ES&S iVotronic Touch-Screen Votes Reportedly Flipping in Pulaski County, Arkansas”
11/3/2014: “Touch-Screen Votes Flipping Dem to Repub in North Carolina’s ‘Toss Up’ U.S. Senate Race”