No worries. The election officials in Stark County, OH say the Diebold touch-screen vote-flipping, as captured on iPhone video by voter and University of Akron freshman Ian Sanderson on Election Day last week, was just “an isolated incident”…
In 2007, Ohio’s current Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, commissioned the largest independent scientific review of electronic voting systems the nation has ever seen. That report, known as EVEREST, resulted in her recommendation that use of all touch-screen voting systems be discontinued in every county in the state. Nonetheless, election officials in counties like Stark have so much contempt for voters that they persist in forcing them to use these 100% unverifiable, oft-failed, easily-manipulated systems a full three years later.
Last Tuesday, the Buckeye State reportedly elected Republicans once more to the offices of both Governor and Secretary of State. Should be another fun Presidential Election there in 2012, eh? Unless, of course, the Republicans were serious about the concerns they expressed, largely for the very first time this year, about e-voting systems like the one seen flipping votes above.
Prior to Election Day we saw reports in Texas, in Nevada and in North Carolina of Republican votes flipping to Democrats or other candidates during the early voting period. The NC GOP claimed to be so outraged by the reports that they filed (and won) a lawsuit suit after one of their attorneys even went so far as to suggest “the touch screen systems should be been banned.”
Even the Republican Party’s Fox “News” managed to run a story on problems with e-voting systems without even mentioning the phony “voter fraud” canard once!
Well, good news for Republicans! As of January, they will be the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives! If they really want to ban unverifiable touch-screen voting systems like the ones that failed this year in NC, TX, NV, OH and elsewhere, they’ve got their big chance! Democrats failed to do so over the last four years, so we’ll be looking forward to the Republican legislation calling for exactly that come January, right?
Video coverage of the incident from Akron’s ABC affiliate WEWS 5 follows below…
[Hat-tip Joyce McCloy’s Voting News.]
I’ve been an election judge for 12 years now and something that has bothered me about the arrival of the computerized voting is it was closely followed by the ban on video recording.
Now you never want to record actual ballot marking by a voter, but we used to have journalists, both local and from overseas, come in to shoot some B-Roll from 20-30′ away from the voters. The journalists had to have prior approval from the county election administer and to be silent and unobtrusive in the polling location.
Now we keep photojournalists 100′ OUTSIDE the doors of the polls. Cell phones and all recording devices are banned 100′ from polling location. And in Texas, officials wouldn’t be worried about the touch screen errors, they would be urgently seeking out and prosecuting the kid who documented this on his/her camera!
Thanks to the anonymous voter who documented this. It’s what voters need to see to understand the validity of the complaints from around the country.
The headline in the Canton Repository was Republicans capture ALL state offices.
ALL? ALL? That alone is suspicious. I guess Rove found another useful idiot to replace Mike Connell. Whoever you are….watch your back!
Initially, he touched the button for his choice and it produced an X there..then he changed his mind and unclicked it, then touched it again, resulting in an X in the wrong place.
I wonder if he had just left his initial vote of choice alone, would his vote then be counted.
ARDIVA @3
I don’t think that’s what the video shows.
This is what I see–9 touches with 9 accompanying beeps(with the 2nd beep sounding more like a mechanical squawk.)
1. First touch-Democratic–but Libertarian lights up
2. touch(squawk)Dem=nothing
3. touch Lib=it disappears
4. touch Dem=Dem appears for a second then disappears
5. touch Dem=nothing
6. touch Dem=Lib lights up
7. touch Dem=Lib disappears
8. touch Dem=Lib appears
9. touch Dem=Lib disappears
If I was Alan Grayson, I would DEMAND a hand recount. And Grayson is just the person to do it too.
Figures it was in a University district where the voters would be more likely to be Democrats.
GREAT JOB Brad for bringing us this evidence and material to our attention!!
Thanks.
Hello Brad,
As someone who worked on touch screen machines for years the calibration of a touch screen was very simple on the models I worked on. Put it into alignment mode and touch three targets. Put it into keyboard test mode (wherever you touch it should give the result at that location and not at another location. If this does not happen then do the alignment again. If this fails again then either replace the parts that are bad or replace the machine and have it sent to a holding area after whatever votes are listed are counted. After the election or during a contested election the voting machine should be scrutinized for both electronic and mechanical problems. Failures could be in either or both areas. This machines results are most likely compromised. GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Even if the machine is quote working unquote you could have GIGO (Good input but Garbage Output).
The only difference between the touch screen and the opscam is with the touch screen you can at least SEE it defrauding you.
WEWS is a Cleveland station. Stark county (40 miles south) is local news. Would it surprise you to know that N. Canton there is home of Diebold?
Someone should hang for this. This is treason.
The voting machines were rigged to give a Republican result. That’s why MSM were predicting results six months before the first vote was cast.
I’ve always been amazed by America’s screwed up voting system.
I live in Thailand where voting takes less than 15 minutes (including standing in line) and where everything is done with a paper ballot.
If Thailand can do this and have relatively valid elections (I don’t believe an election in any country is 100% legal), why can’t the US?
The answer, Brad, is NO. The GOP will NOT do a thing. We all know this. The reason why is that reality is nothing more than another construct to the GOP
Let’s take for example Faux News commentators. They’re on the air saying incredibly ridiculous things about Dems, atheists, gays, etc. It never matters that what they say is false. It matters not that they’re on TAPE.
Another example. Rick Perry now says he never even suggested that TX secede from the union. There is plenty of evidence that says otherwise.
In the days before the mid-terms, the GOP simply trotted out one of their favorite fear factor memes. ‘The Dems are going to commit massive voter fraud’. It’s nothing more than a political assertion, designed to affect their base. Nothing more. It’s not based on any facts.
But what we also know is that the GOP are masters at the art of PROJECTION. Whatever it is that they rail against is precisely what they’re doing to YOU and ME.
Diebold’s CEO is on record as telling us that they intend to make sure Dems do NOT win. We already know this. We knew this at the very beginning of the Diebold touchscreen voting era. It still holds true today.
Facts, video, audio, and reality are nothing more than games to the GOP. They create the meme and they intend for us to propagate their memes.
That’s why Diebold’s hackable voting machines will continue to be used and why the GOP will remain silent about this issue.
Oh, and they’ll find out who filmed this and someone in ‘authority’ will visit him. Guaranteed. All iPhone videos contain RAW data that tracks back to the owner. Also included is GPS data and time/date stamps.
I’m ashamed to say that most of my life I wasn’t paying attention and voted Republican. However, knowing the background of Cheney and the Bush Dynasty, partcularly acid head, drunken Jr. who was thrown into the race with Daddys money that was the last straw. I began to pay attention. Too late because the Republican party is bought and paid for by big Corprations and the Banking system and least I forget the Bilderberger group and they are worse then the Mafia or any criminal organization in the world. They will have their day because there is a higher power they will have to answer too.
From watching the video I think a lot more is required. We’ve all played with touchscreen technology and know that it doesn’t always work the way we’d like. We’ve all experience trying to select one thing and something next to it being selected, not so much on the iPhone, but those stupid credit card machines at the grocery store. I would also be more inclined to believe if he had also experimented selecting another candidate from further down and seeing it still select the Libertarian.
I voted in Texas. Paper and electronic voting were available. I initially chose electronic, but switched to paper because the e-line was too long. In less than 5 minutes I was scanning my paper ballot at the box and registering my vote.
Did the student request a paper ballot? Paper ballots were available; http://www.ohio.com/news/local/107874994.html states that a lot of paper ballots went unused. Evidently the intelligent, democrat voting, young students did not see the need to request them or they were too dumb to realize that the conniving republicans machinated with the evil corporate interests to steel their votes.
Javier Jimenez @ 16:
Evidently the intelligent Republican young Javier Jimenez doesn’t know how to spell “steal”.
In any case, I’m delighted to see you believe a person’s vote should be unverifiable simply due to the voting system they were used (and, in Ohio, many voters are encouraged, if not forced, to vote on such unverifiable systems).
That you didn’t offer any comparably snarky comments about all of those Republicans in TX, NV, NC etc. who complained about those “conniving Democrats” who “machinated with evil interests” to “steel” Republican votes in those states has been duly noted.