Butthole Bandits 7 and a throwback to Jim Crowe

[Strike For The South]

You're always funny, Strike, but you're not normally dense.

Read up. Consider the problems inherent in handing the keys to elections to private companies. Really, this ain't rocket science, nor is it tinfoil hat land.

People are scummy and will quickly seize any advantage. This is not a Republican or a Democrat thing, it's a human nature thing. You simply do not leave the cookie jar unguarded.

The more troubling thing to me is that this system failed the saftey tests and everyone seems apathetic.

I'm not interested in playing six degrees of Romney, the man has money everywhere and could be tied to every major company in America if you looked hard enough. Hell my emaciated 401k probably has investments I would find morally iffy. Romney doesn't know what investments his investments make, nor his son.

But for a moment, let's assume this is true. There is enough democratic power in Ohio to at least call for an investigation on the merits of these crappy machines. So why not? If they are failing election tests, coupled with their supposed handlers, why is this story still on the fringes?

[Lemur]

If they are failing election tests, coupled with their supposed handlers, why is this story still on the fringes?

I don't know that Salon, CNN Money, and Ars Technica are what you'd call "fringe." And apparently many states lack the money to switch away from the private companies. For now.

Ernest Zirkle was puzzled. The resident of Fairfield Township in Cumberland County, NJ, ran for a seat on his local Democratic Executive Committee on June 7, 2011. The official results showed him earning only nine votes, compared to 34 votes for the winning candidate.

But at least 28 people told Zirkle they voted for him. So he and his wife—who also ran for an open seat and lost—challenged the result in court. Eventually, a county election official admitted the result was due to a programming error. A security expert from Princeton was called in to examine the machines and make sure no foul play had occurred. Unfortunately, when he examined the equipment on August 17, 2011, he found someone deleted key files the previous day, making it impossible to investigate the cause of the malfunction. A new election was held on September 27, and the Zirkles won. [...]

In 2008, 16 voters in West Virginia "reported vote flipping on the state's touchscreen direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines. All reported that when they selected Obama, the machine switched their vote to McCain." That same year in seven Texas counties that collectively used voting machines from three different vendors, voters selected the straight-ticket Democratic option only to have their votes changed to straight-ticket Republican.

The errors don't stop there. A similar problem was reported in Craven County, North Carolina, in 2010. A technical glitch in Butler County, Ohio, caused 200 votes to go uncounted in 2008. In Pennington County, South Dakota, in 2009, a computer responsible for tabulating the vote totals from multiple individual voting machines malfunctioned. It added thousands of imaginary votes to the total. (Luckily, the mistake was caught after election officials noticed that the total was inconsistent with the figures reported by individual machines.)

Joe Hall, an e-voting expert at the Center for Democracy and Technology, tells us these kinds of glitches are unsurprising given the decentralized way the United States organizes its elections.

[Major Robert Dump]

I went to vote early today, but got the polling machine mixed up with a Red Box, and when I tried to vote for Obama I ended up getting some Tyler Perry movie about a fat grandma

[Lemur]

This demonstrates why in-person voting fraud is maybe the stupidest idea ever (and why no self-respecting criminal enterprise would use it at scale)

Investigators today arrested a Southern Nevada woman suspected of trying to vote twice this week at two different polling locations.

Roxanne Rubin was taken into custody as she arrived for work at the Riviera hotel-casino, investigators said. Rubin, 56, is a registered Republican who lives in Henderson, according to the Clark County Registrar.

Rubin allegedly cast a vote Monday at the Anthem Community Center in Henderson. Later that day, she tried to vote a second time at an early voting location on Eastern Avenue, investigators said.

When Rubin arrived at the second location, a poll worker conducted a routine database check and found Rubin had already voted. When confronted by the poll worker, Rubin denied having voted and claimed the database used by the poll worker was wrong. [...]

Rubin was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on one felony count of voting twice in the same election.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I don't get this:

As if databases are always right. And why are the feds involved, this is obviously a local matter. And why is this a felony? Who was at all harmed??

And...

I really am amazed that someone would be so stupid as to try to vote twice in this fashion given that Nevada does check identity for just this reason.

In California, however, it is trivial to vote multiple times. All that is needed is for someone go to a polling place, give the name of a valid voter in that precinct, and then sign the roll. No ID is required, and if asked for the request can be refused. The poll worker MUST let you vote.

Given that there is usually about 40% of the population who do not show up, there are good odds you can pick a name from the rolls and get away with this.

Note that the issue of citizenship or being registered doesn't even come into play.