4 Out of 12 Ballot Selections Printed Out Incorrectly, Myriad Other Laws Violated...
As a fairly well-known Election Integrity journalist who has personally covered, for years, the myriad election woes of thousands (if not millions) of voters around the country who have tried to bring seemingly endless stories of votes flipped on e-voting systems to the attention of officials, these stories always continue to be remarkable to me, even if not to many others in the rest of the mainstream media.
It's even more troubling when one realizes that so little ever seems to be done in light of so many of these horror stories, as those very same failed systems are still deployed across the nation, with little or no modification to correct the mountains of documented problems even now, as we head towards an election likely to be of historic proportions this November.
What follows is yet another one of those stories, where a voter had vote selections flipped by the electronic voting system, such that candidates were chosen other than the ones intended to be selected by the voter, though no fault of his own.
But this time, the voter is me.
Though I've covered so many of these stories, it was nonetheless remarkable to see it happen before ones very eyes, as occurred yesterday when I voted here in Los Angeles during our very low turnout California state Primary election.
The ES&S electronic voting system that I used to try to vote on yesterday, ended up flipping a total of 4 out of the 12 contests and initiatives for which I had attempted to vote.
Right before my very eyes, the computer-printed ballot produced by the voting system I was using, incorrectly filled in bubbles for four of the races I was voting in. Had I not been incredibly careful, after the ballot was printed out, to painstakingly compare what was printed to what I actually voted for, I'd have never known my votes were being given to candidates I did not vote for.
Had I been a blind voter -- as the system I was using was largely intended for use by the disabled -- I would have cast my ballot without having a clue that a full 40% of the votes I'd tried to cast for various California Superior Court judges were flipped to other candidates.
After speaking late last night about the problem to Dean Logan, the current acting Registrar-Recorder for Los Angeles County (the country's largest voting jurisdiction) and officials from the CA Sec. of State's office, I can report the failed e-voting machine in question is now being quarantined for testing to try and determine what happened in this, just the latest in a mounting string of failures by voting systems made by ES&S, the country's largest supplier of voting equipment.
While the machine is being sequestered for examination -- and one wonders if the same swift action would have been promised to someone not as well known to both the Registrar's and Sec. of State's office -- we'll call that point the "good news" for the moment.
In addition to the stunning error-rate of the failed ES&S InkaVote Plus voting machine I had tried to use, my day at the polls yesterday additionally revealed an amazing number of apparent violations of federal law, the California state Election Code, and a number of local, Los Angeles County provisions.
Yesterday's election was the final one this year, prior to the very same election equipment being scheduled for use this November as we barrel towards what will undoubtedly be an unprecedented turnout for the General Election.
Click here for the complete story of what happened to me and my ballot, and what I witnessed -- with pictures -- yesterday at the polls.
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I'll happily spend my time filling little circles with a pencil.
I have plenty of electronic gadgets and computers. I don't need another one to vote on. Especially considering that not a single gadget or computer I own is bug free. Not one of them.
One month's worth of what we spend in Iraq could fix this problem nationwide once and for all. Money should never be an obstacle to the most basic element of our democracy: counting our votes and counting them correctly.
Many times in the history of this country (Tammany Hall, Chicago, Voting institutions that prevented Black people from voting etc... etc....) we have historically documented cases of elections being "fixed."
Why do we think it would be any different nowadays? Look at what happened since 2000 if you were a Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater or other defense contractor executive. All you would have to do is help to tweak the election process in Florida and you are now a billionaire. Pretty small cost if you already have no morality.
There needs to be a non-partisan election commission set up that is independent from the clutches and influences of a political party. Our founders' belief in checks and balances have served us well most of the way through the history of our Republic. Now we need someone checking and balancing the election process.
There is no greater threat to national security than an election system that allows someone to "game" it. If someone is put at the highest levels of government because of fraud, that is effectively a coup d' etat, not to mention the most massive violation of civil rights imaginable.
One person, one vote .... and the vote has to count. This is not a difficult problem to solve - we have to make it a national priority.