Of course, we’ve heard such reports during Primary Elections around the country already this year (see this one, where the Diebold touch-screen voting machine gave a voter a ballot for the wrong election, noticed only because he happened to be an eagle-eyed talk radio political reporter.)
Now, this just in yesterday from “bonobo”, a blogger at dKos, on the first day of Early Voting on the same unreliable, hackable Diebold touch-screen voting machines, but this time in Franklin County, Ohio. And, again, from someone who happened to be politically involved enough to notice the “error”!…
State Senate District 15
Ray Miller – Democrat
John M. Roscoe – Republican
I don’t live in State Senate District 15. I live in State Senate District 3, soon to be represented by Emily Kreider. But if something didn’t get fixed, she’d have to get elected without my vote, because she wasn’t one of the choices I was offered. I have a local politics blog called Blue Bexley. I focus almost exclusively on two races. One is OH-12, Shamansky vs. Tiberi, and the other is Ohio State Senate District 3, Emily Kreider vs. David Goodman. If you were to scan through my blog you’d get an idea at how unhappy I was at this point.
First of all, I want my ballot. Second of all, I want to know how many people are going to vote for a barely contested Dem in SS15 instead of the Dem in the dead heat race in SS3.
Things got worse, and soon the Franklin County, OH Election Director, Matt Damschroder (the one who was docked thirty days pay last year for passing on a $10,000 “contribution” from a Diebold rep over to the Ohio Republican Party just prior to the 2004 Election, but who apparently still has the same job!) came out himself to help.
The voter’s detailed account of the problem continues…
Not good indeed. Especially since we imagine Director Damschroder won’t be able to personally come out on Election Day and correct every “error” that will likely be occurring. That is, if voters even notice such “errors” at all! The one described above would easily be missed by your average voter.
The report ends ominously this way:
We’re afraid of that too, bonobo. In fact, we’re counting on it…
But of course, they’re going to have to work harder to steal the election this year, so they’re getting an early start
Just received a absentee ballot application here in Ohio.
Does anyone know if the absentee ballot program will be more or less reliable than the diebold voting machines?
Damschroder looks like a villain from Dick Tracy.
OMG! they are stealing it already! I’m telling you these criminals will steal this election too. Somehow we need to stop this crap. They are raping our democracy!
I have been following the Brad Blog with ever-increasing amazement that the World’s Greatest Democracy could contemplate using non-auditable voting systems. Notwithstanding the obvious deficiencies, doesn’t the fact that such systems depend on a small number of specialised machines at each voting station make them vulnerable to simple sabotage? What happens if a disaffected voter smashes a touch screen? (Is it possible to do so?) How easy would it be to close down a polling station altogether? Over here in our small european monarchy we have an honourable tradition of vigorous political demonstration and voting machines would have been thrown out ages ago. Anyway, what’s wrong with paper? It’s simple and secure and most of the results in UK elections are declared within 3 or 4 hours of the polls closing.
Get one fact straight: Franklin County does NOT use Diebold. It is an ES&S county.
# 2 Walter66, see Brad’s comment regarding absentee voting.
https://bradblog.com/?p=3556#more-3556
This is my second try at getting into Brads. For two days I get Default Plesk Page. Last try won’t go into the comments. (Foley and Hastert both Dems piece) It’s happened before, (only with Brads) but not for this long. Is Brads being hacked too? (sorry, I meant to say a glitch) HELP
The fix is in!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20...5/001418.shtml