By Brad Friedman on 10/26/2010, 5:57pm PT  

After reports of ES&S touch-screen votes flipping away from Republicans, for a change, over the last several days in North Carolina and in Texas, reports are now coming in from Nevada about similar occurrences on that state's Sequoia touch-screens, just in time to underscore the importance of my story published today at Truthout, "Hacking Harry Reid (or Sharron's Angle)" arguing that one or both of the candidates locked in the Silver State Senate Standoff need to get to a court immediately, even though neither of them are likely to do so.

First, the reports of touch-screen troubles today in NV (which closely mirror the scores of reports in the same state that I detailed exclusively in 2008 as affecting Obama and the Democrats during early voting). This time, however, it's Republican voters charging trouble with touch-screens...

Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines.

Voter Joyce Ferrara said when they went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, her Democratic opponent, Sen. Harry Reid's name was already checked.

Ferrara said she wasn't alone in her voting experience. She said her husband and several others voting at the same time all had the same thing happen.

The Clark County Registrar of Voters, as such officials are wont to do, downplayed the reports, describing them as "patently false" and claims they were reported only to the media, but not to election officials.

Whether they were or weren't, doesn't really matter. The fact is, nobody should be forced --- as the entire state of Nevada is --- to vote on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machines. Not even in the state where slot machines, if not e-voting machines, go through unbelievable rigorous testing. And if the election results are reported as close as they are expected to be, there will be no way to disprove the inevitable cries of "fraud" whether any actually occurred or not. That point, is at the heart of my piece for Truthout today which begins this way:

Hacking Harry Reid (or Sharron's Angle)

by: Brad Friedman, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

Sharron Angle should start filing the lawsuits right now. Then again, so should Harry Reid. However, it might be a bit more difficult politically for the Senate majority leader, given the undeserved support Reid has shown in the past for Nevada's 100 percent unverifiable, error-prone, hackable, illegally-certified, electronic voting systems the state forces all voters to use at the polling place.

Given that the Angle/Reid contest in Nevada is likely to be among the closest - and most closely-watched - races for the US Senate this November 2, both parties would be wise to get to court and file for an order to ensure all of the hard drives, flash memory chips and memory cartridges to be used in their electronic voting machines during both early voting and on Election Day are securely retained for 22 months after the election.

Please read the rest of the article here...

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