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MOAR fucking VOTE-FLIPPING ON ES & S MACHINES IN TEXAS AND MISSOURI

With every incident so far reported of touch-screen vote-flipping during early voting in this year's general election --- from county to county in WV and in Nashville TN) , it's been the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machine that's failed, flipping votes from one candidate to another not chosen by the voter. In most instances, it's been an attempted Democratic vote, flipped to a Republican, or another party.
These are the same machines that lost 18,000 votes in Democratic-leaning Sarasota County in the 2006 U.S. House Race for Katherine Harris' old seat. The Democrat, Christine Jennings, was declared the loser to Republican Vern Buchanan (whose own wife had trouble voting for him that day), by just 369 votes. Several academic studies, and even the GAO, has been unable to rule out either tampering or hardware/software error for the disappeared 18,000 votes.
As we wrote earlier this week, after there was finally one report of a vote flipping from Democratic to Republican in TN (a very rare instance, btw!), these machines need to be taken out of service now, impounded and quarantined immediately, and every voter needs to be given a paper ballot where these machines are currently being used! Voters who have such problems need to let every other vote in line know which machine should not be used (and we offer other tips below, as well.)
The latest reports today of ES&S vote-flipping come from Palo Pinto County, TX, where two voters --- one of them an alternate election judge and office manager of the Palo Pinto County Democratic Headquarters --- saw straight-ticket Democratic votes flipped to straight ticket Republican votes. Two times for the first person, and three times for the alternate election judge!
The report is a doozy...

At least two Palo Pinto County residents say they experienced early voting problems when the touch-screen voting machines they used kept switching their straight-party vote from Democratic to Republican. "When I cast an early vote [Wednesday] at Palo Pinto County Courthouse, my vote was switched from Democrat to Republican right in front of my face - twice!" reported Lona Jones, a Precinct 1 county resident.
Intending to vote straight party on the Democratic ticket, Jones said she was surprised Wednesday when the electronic voting machine "on the left as you face the machines" in the courthouse basement asked her if she wanted to cast her vote for a straight Republican ticket.
Thinking she had pushed the wrong button the first time the machine "came up Republican," Jones said she repeated her intended straight-party vote.
"The second time I was sure to just touch the Democratic button," she said, further reporting that the machine responded to her selection, "'Do you want to change your Republican straight ticket vote to a Democratic vote?' I pressed, 'Yes,' then it came back up and it was a total Republican ticket again.

"
...

Yesterday, VelvetRevolution.us election integrity expert, Emily Levy suggested that when this problem occurs, voters should first tell officials, and ask them to remove the machine from service.

Then...Tell everyone else in line waiting to vote, which machine it is that caused the problem, and warn everyone else not to use it!

These are among the steps she recommends, with which strongly concur:

* Call poll supervisors to observe the problem
* Fill out a problem report
* Refuse to vote on that machine
* Request that the machine be taken out of service
* Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be unlikely in many cases)
* Tell other voters not to vote on that machine
* Call county/town election office
* Call local reporters
* Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE)
* Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.
* Raise holy hell.

[Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR.]

Big Setbacks for GOP Voter Suppression Efforts in Swing States

Republican Party efforts to stop thousands of voters from casting meaningful ballots in 2008 because their registration information does not match government databases with high error rates was set back by legal rulings in Wisconsin, Ohio and Nevada on Thursday.

In Wisconsin, a judge threw out a lawsuit by the state Attorney General, who also is the McCain campaign co-chair. In Ohio and Nevada, each state's top election official issued an order or opinion rejecting such 'no-match' voter challenges.

While Republican officials criticized these moves, it appears that momentum is building against GOP efforts to use ambiguities in voter registration laws to challenge large numbers of 2008 voters.

The federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 instructs states to use Social Security and driver's license databases to verify registrations, but leaves it up to states to decide how to specifically do that.

That ambiguity has been the backdrop of the GOP's assertions that states must segregate problem voter registrations, treating them as a separate class of ballots. But, so far, most state and federal courts have rejected the Republican's legal arguments.MORE