and mama definitely wasn't happy as she came out of early voting here in East Tennessee today. This was the last day of early voting, and for a supposedly gimme republican state like Tennessee early voting has been surprisingly heavy. Mama has bad knees and we had given up on two other days with long lines and chaotic parking.
As she came out of the building and found me waiting she said, "Did you check your ballot?" She noted that on the ballot summary of the last page before you hit the Cast Ballot button, you could review a list of all your selections. After selecting Obama on the first page, it showed her as having voted for Romney. She had to page back and re-select before the final ballot review indicated an Obama vote. And she knows she had initially selected Obama.
When we got home, she remarked as we got inside, "if they're going to steal my vote, they should at least pay me for it like in the old days." Which got me to thinking. Number one, why try to siphon off votes in a non-swing state like Tennessee? And number two, shouldn't it be illegal for a candidate to have a son working for a voting machine company?
I wouldn't even be ranting except that I've read other accounts on kos of early voters noticing the same kind of vote flipping on these electronic machines. And yes, we kept our little paper receipts with the voter number thingy. Check / review your ballots. I myself confess I did not double check the summary page after reading through five pages of local initiatives. I just wanted to get out of there, which I guess is what "they" (whoever "they" are) were banking on. I was going to title this diary If You're Gonna Steal My Vote Then At Least Pay Me For It, but mama (my wife) nixed that one. But she is still stunned that it actually happened to her.