No matter how well-positioned we may be come November, if the MSM continues to ignore the systemic pattern of irregularities occuring with touchscreen voting systems, it will all be for naught. This folks, has the postential to be a greater threat than the Rovian Army itself (though I would not rule out complicity on his part in this matter either).
As I have stated in past comments, Brad Friedman of
The Brad Blog has been doing an excellent job documenting the growing number of reports of voting irregularities around the nation. Conspiracies aside, that the matter has not gained a foothold in the public's conscience should be cause for much alarm.
Judging from some of the recent events, this issue is NOT going away.
From the St. Petersburg Times:
And on Election Day Cook charged that the voting machines malfunctioned in several precincts, including his own precinct at Skyview Recreation Center. When Cook tried to vote for himself, the machine defaulted to a vote for Taylor. A precinct worker finally moved Cook to a different booth.
Later in the day, Cook said he had other reports of voting machines malfunctioning in similar ways.
Nancy Whitlock, communications director for the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Office, said there had been a problem at Cook's precinct. One machine, she said, registered a different answer when voters touched it. Poll workers recalibrated it to fix the problem.
Whitlock said she did not know how many people had voted before the problem was caught. But the machines, she said, allow voters to look at their votes before finalizing them.
No one else complained, so it is unlikely the problem affected many, if any, other votes, she said.
Friedman connects a few dots and discovers:
The flipping machines used in the Pinellas County, FL election were paperless touch-screens made by Sequoia Voting Systems -- the same paperless "Edge" touch-screen systems whose purchase and future use in New Mexico was recently banned in the state in light of a lawsuit where many voters complained of the same type of "vote flipping" on the machines during the 2004 Presidential Election.
Those are also the same machines which lost more than 12,000 votes in Bernalillo County, NM in 2002.
While Whitlock may be so cavalier about waiving-off the isolated 'flipping' incident in Cook County, I have a difficult time reconciling with her assumption that there should be no cause for concern nor reason to believe the incident could have been duplicated to any significant degree. Should it not be the obligation of an election supervisor to insure the validity of balloting methods? Are we to take comfort entrusting our election officials with the obligation of preserving a fair tabulation system and then asked to go along in assuming that any reported glitches are probably isolated and insignificant?
Unfortunately, isolated incidences they are not. In Tarrant County, Texas, a computer glitch was responsible for a dramatic spike in votes cast. Good soldier Brad is on the Case:
An undetected computer glitch in Tarrant County led to inflated election returns in Tuesday's primaries but did not alter the outcome of any local race, elections and county officials said Wednesday.
The error caused Tarrant County to report as many as 100,000 votes in both primaries that never were cast, dropping the local turnout from a possible record high of about 158,103 voters to about 58,000.
...
Questions about possible problems were raised by election staff late Tuesday night, as it became apparent to some that the county would far exceed the 76,000 votes cast in the 2002 primary elections.
But elections officials did not look into the discrepancies that night because they were dealing with a new system, new procedures and some new equipment, said Gayle Hamilton, Tarrant County's interim elections administrator.
"We didn't think there was a problem," Hamilton said. "We should have stopped right then.
"But we didn't question it at that time."
"But we didn't question it at the time." Follow the link for the SCORES OF ADDITIONAL E-VOTING PROBLEMS REPORTED YESTERDAY.
I did a google search on the term: "voting irregularities" and came up with zero reports by any faction of the MSM. As has been the case for the past few years, the media has chosen to devote precious few columns to what a growing number of us see as a distinct and real threat to our right to a free and fair election. I urge everyone to take action and let 60 Minutes know of our pressing desire to have a thorough investigation on the matter so that the public can finally have a constructive debate on the merit of serious
oversight reform.