Could it be fraud?
In a scene straight out of an upcoming Simpsons episode, early voters in West Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas have had their electronic vote for Obama switch to McCain in front of their eyes.
Here's a video of the vote flipping from West Virginia (from October 27, 2008).
The WV counties affected, so far only Putnam and Jackson, use the ES&S iVotronic touchscreen machines. In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing elections. Is this a hint of the excitement we have in store for the grand finale of the World’s Greatest Reality Show: Who wants to rule the world?
The outcomes of some of the election fraud investigations from 2004 are just now reaching trials. Check out this very interesting story on electronic voting machines that is getting almost no attention, with the warning that...
"There is already a plan in play to swing the Presidential race to John McCain, who he claims will win by 3 electoral votes and 51% of the popular vote."
But would they? And who are they?
Perhaps the most notorious of the electronic voting machine companies is Diebold, who had to change their name to Premier Election Solutions in an attempt to avoid controversies and negative impressions. The largest of the companies is Election Systems & Software (ES&S). Combined, their products tally over 80% of the votes cast in America. Both of these companies have many documented connections to Republican activists. So a political motivation exists for fraud.
American Information Systems, which later became ES&S, was primarily funded and still majority owned by Howard F. Ahmanson and the Ahmanson Foundation. Howard Ahmanson belongs to the Council for National Policy, a right wing organization and also finances the Chalcedon Institute, which is an extreme Christian organization who's stated purpose is to establish Old Testament Biblical law as the standard for society. So there exists an ideological and religious motivation for affecting the outcome of an election.
American Information Systems, was founded by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. Bob went on to become President of Diebold, while Todd is still with ES&S. So there exists the potential for coordinating the efforts of the two largest election machine manufacturers, which would be useful for wide-scale fraud.
And then we come back to greed. What if one of the political parties simply paid the companies (or more likely, a few key individuals) a lot of money to change the outcome of the election? Or what if some businessman did? Or what if I did? Perhaps it is only free market fraud, available to anyone willing to pay the price. As an example of this potential, in December of 2005, Diebold's CEO Wally O'Dell left the company when faced with securities fraud litigation and insider trading charges. So they have shown a willingness to benefit financially outside of the law.
Jeff Dean, Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer at Global Election Systems, the company purchased by Diebold in 2002 which became Diebold Election Systems, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in software he created for ATMs using, according to court documents, a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years. In addition to Dean, GES employed a number of other convicted felons in senior positions, including a fraudulent securities trader and a drug trafficker.
It does seem possible that there is some intentional fraud going on. Or it all could be explained by a few coincidences, and a lot of human error.
Just remember, they can only steal so much. And it has to look believable.
Luckily, it’s becoming less and less believable, and there are more and more paper trails. So fraud may not play a significant role in this election. But keep on eye on Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida... these three states use paperless electronic voting machines.
And make sure you’re still registered to vote, there’s been a lot of fishy stuff going on in that direction.
What to do if vote switching or machine problems happen to you:
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 difficult in many cases).
Tell other voters in line which machine it was and that they should NOT vote on that machine!
Report it to county/town election office.
Report it to the Secretary of State.
Call local reporters and tell them the story.
Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) and report it.
Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.
Raise holy hell.
REMINDER: Please bring a video camera/cell phone camera when you go to vote so you can document these problems on video tape, and then upload them to VideoTheVote.org!