Not knocking my good neighbors in nearby Clay county, but if it can be done in Clay county Kentucky, it can be done Anywhere. Isn't it time we addressed this problem of Voting machine insecurity before another major election? From the Lexington Herald Leader...
FRANKFORT, Ky. -- A jury convicted a former judge and seven others on Thursday of scheming to buy votes for several local offices in an eastern Kentucky county.
The jury in U.S. District Court in Frankfort deliberated for nine hours over two days before convicting all eight people in a federal racketeering conspiracy. Those convicted on Thursday included former Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle and former school Superintendent Douglas C. Adams.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reports the jury also convicted several of the defendants on other charges, including mail fraud, extortion and laundering money that was used to buy votes...
..."In Clay County, if you're not in politics or in with the clique, you don't get nothing," Kenneth Day, a convicted drug dealer and professed vote-buyer, testified during the trial...(More in Link)
But before you think this is just a case of standard vote buying, Check out what BradBlog has uncovered in the trial...
...The BRAD BLOG has been following this story since the conspirators were originally arrested in March of last year, and as details of the election officials' manipulation of ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines has emerged...
Supporters of unverifiable electronic voting, such as election officials and voting machines companies, had long argued that, though manipulation of such systems was possible, nobody had actually ever done so. While that dubious argument was difficult to independently verify one way or another --- since the private vendors make public oversight of such systems virtually impossible by blocking citizen inspection and oversight of such systems due to claims of "trade secrecy" --- the denialists arguments are no longer valid.
Furthermore, the verdict underscores what many critics of e-voting have long argued: the greatest security threat to such systems come from election insiders, not from the voting public and dubious claims of "voter fraud".
We recently detailed the testimony of one of the witnesses in the case who described how she was trained by the county's chief election official, Clerk Freddy Thompson (one of those convicted today), to change votes cast by voters on the county's ES&S touch-screen voting systems after they'd left the voting booth. The witness, Wanda White also detailed how she was instructed to change her own voter registration from Republican to Democratic so that she could serve as a Democratic precinct official.
The ES&S iVotronic touch-screen systems secretly manipulated by the cabal of election officials in Kentucky to change voter's votes, are used in a total of 18 states, including Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and West Virginia...(MORE IN LINK).
Bolding was mine...
It is time we take a serious look at these machines, and rather or not they are a benefit or a detriment to the democratic process. As they are today, I call them a detriment. Too insecure, too unsafe and it is time to demand our votes be taken more seriously than this. Can we not do something. Can some states not fix this by putting it on the ballot the same way the right gets Amendments against marriage or California gets to decide if Marijuana should be legal there?
State to state info regarding putting something on the ballot can be found HERE. For those of you curious about that path in your state. Ballotopedia also has information about the states and how to do this.