Disappeared News: Vote flipping detected in W.Virginia

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Vote flipping detected in W.Virginia

by Larry Geller

BradBlog is probably the best resource on the Internet for voting issues. This just arrived in my newsreader:

At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.
Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.
"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.
...
Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.
"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again….” [quoted in BradBlog.com,And It Begins Again: Touch-Screen Votes Flipping From Dem to Rep in WV, 10/18/2008]

The computers in question are made by ES&S. Hawaii has selected HART (the contract is still under dispute, but the machines are in use).

If you don’t want your vote to be disappeared (or worse, credited to the other side!), why not vote on paper?

While Hawaii isn’t using the same machines, there are other questions that voters should be concerned about. I published pictures in an earlier article from an observant tipster showing voting machines (a HART voting computer, a paper ballot reader, and a box of stuff alleged to be memory cards, security seals, etc.) left unattended before the primary election. If the seals in the box resemble the seals on the machine, then it would seem that anyone could take the machine home overnight, have their way with it, and replace the seals from the contents of the box. Or play with the memory cards.

As we approach the national election, if you spot voting supplies and equipment left unattended, please alert officials, probably the local police. I’d appreciate your report here as well. Photos too.