QUICK RECAP: Randy Wooten, mayoral candidate of Waldenburg, Arkansas (pop. 80) officially received
zero votes in last week's election. Knowing he at least voted for himself Randy Wooten is officially protesting the results (noted in
yesterday's diary). As SusanG
front-paged, the original AP reporting raised serious questions about election integrity and Randy & Roxanne Wooten's marital bliss.
In today's update we learn:
* Does Roxanne Wooten become a Runaway Voter Bride? (h/t Cream City)
* Does ES&S side with people or machines?
* Are elected officials concerned about election integrity?
Alas, the AP and the rest of the "traditional" media outlets have dropped this story. Move along, there's nothing to see. Meanwhile, there's still one reality-based media segment with the intellectual curiousity to follow this story: the computer trade press. Todd R Weiss at Computer Advisor has the most comprehensive coverage yet of
The Arkansas touchscreen mystery. First off, he reminds us why this story is so important:
So far, [Wooten] said, no one has been able to explain the situation, which on a smaller scale reflects a similar situation in Sarasota County, Florida. There, some 18,000 voters were not recorded as casting ballots in a Congressional race.
Now, on to the rest of the news.
* Does Roxanne Wooten become a Runaway Voter Bride?
Randy Wooten is sleeping easier.
Roxanne, said she voted for him too, so he should have had at least two votes.
Roxanne Wooten does have some idea what might have gone wrong:
"The machine was really touchy," she said. "When you touched one [candidate's name], it would jump to the next [candidate]. If you didn't touch it just right, exactly where you were supposed to, it would jump. In other words, whoever voted for him just wasn't careful enough. It makes you wonder about all of them."
Roxanne Wooten said that when she was able to see a review screen of her votes, she was able to catch one error and correct it. But that still doesn't explain what happened to her vote for her husband, she said.
Maybe she should be mayor! She's more on top of this than anyone else.
* Does ES&S side with people or machines?
Do you have any doubt?? They side with covering their ass.
JC Lassiter, a county election commissioner, said yesterday that an expert from the maker of the touchscreen machine, ES&S (Election Systems & Software), is coming to the town to investigate and look over the machine and the results.
The lack of a complete expert investigation doesn't stop the ES&S spokesperson from reaching conclusions.
Jill Friedman, a spokeswoman for Omaha-based ES&S, said yesterday that "there was no problem with the equipment, period" based on an analysis of the paper voting logs in the machine.
Quick, recite the rest of that playbook.
In a recount, officials can see the paper records and see where a voter selected a candidate or deselected a candidate as they voted, she said.
In the Waldenburg mayor's race, one of the printed logs shows a person selecting Wooten, then deselecting him and voting for another candidate, Friedman said. "We have looked at the unit and looked at facts, and based on the data, this is what occurred. I cannot talk about hypotheticals.
The machines must be right, it's those idiot voters that just don't know how to use them. Never mind the voter may not have realized they had selected the second candidate. Never mind that the printed tape may not have correctly recorded the voter's intentions.
If it comes from a computer it must be correct. People are fallable, computers are infallable. Don't concern yourself that computers are designed, programmed, administered and operated by fallable people. That's just not relevant.
* Are elected officials concerned about election integrity?
Incumbent Mayor William Wood (who along with challenger Ronnie Chatman both received 18 votes) are you concerned about the integrity of your local elections?
Wood said he believes in the tallies; he discounted Wooten's concerns. "According to the machine, Mr. Wooten did not vote for himself," Wood said. "And Mrs Wooten did not vote for him. He claims there were six or eight more people in town who promised him that they would vote for him, but they were not there [on the machine tallies]."
"He made up the story," Wood said, arguing that "if Wooten had voted for himself, it would have thrown the election to me [by taking a vote from challenger Chatman].
Wow, what a nice guy. No vested interests to protect there, eh?
I'm afraid the Waldenburg situation may devolve into a he-said, she-said morass. I hope the level of interest remains high enough to find out the source of the mistakes. A small scale situation like this is one of the best chances yet to figure out how election processes fail. Better to catch it (and fix it) for the Waldenburg mayor's race than have it determine our next President.
The HAVA-driven move to electronic voting looks like so many other Republican donor subsidies. I don't know what the ultimate answer is but with people who believe in government returning to Washington they've got yet another mess to clean up!