It's not like it's going to make a difference now, and besides - I already said I was giving up on America. But when I see SOOOOO many examples like those below, I get really pissed off and I wanna say something about it!!!!!
E-voting machines caught switching votes
InfoWorld
"U.S. voters calling in to a toll-free number had reported more than 1,100 separate incidents of problems with electronic voting machines and other voting technologies by late Tuesday during the nationwide election. In more than 30 reported cases, when voters reviewed their choices before finalizing them, an electronic voting machine indicated they had voted for a different candidate... In a majority of cases where machines allegedly recorded a wrong vote, votes were taken away from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, or a Democratic candidate in another race, and given to Republican President George Bush or another Republican candidate, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation... 'We're only hearing from people who caught it,' Cohn said during a press conference... 'It gives us this uneasy feeling we're seeing the tip of the iceberg.'"
Read article... and This... and This...
Computer Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio
CNN
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.
Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch.
Read Article...
E-voting machines lose 4,531 votes in North Carolina precinct
WNCT-TV 9 Greenville
"Ed Pond says when the numbers didn't match up, manufacturers told him: 'Of the votes we have, 3,006 is all we can recover. We said, "What do you mean?"' What that means is: of 7,537 voters, every one made after 3,005 were not saved in the computer memory. The Carteret county board of elections say their electronic voting system is owned by Unilect. Initially they told the board 10,000 votes could be stored in these computer systems. In actuality, it was 7,000... Luckily, Pond says this slip up was not large enough to change elected leaders... Both sides agree a backup or alert system should be in place for next election."
Read article... and This article...
E-voting machines lose 37 votes in Florida precinct
Bradenton Herald
"Nine voting machines ran out of battery power and nearly 40 votes may have been lost in Palm Beach County, the first major problem reported on Election Day... The nine machines at a Boynton Beach precinct weren't plugged in properly, and their batteries wore down around 9:30 a.m., said Marty Rogol spokesman for Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore. Poll clerk Joyce Gold said 37 votes appeared to be missing after she compared the computer records to the sign-in sheet. Elections officials won't know exactly how many votes were lost until after polls close... U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat, unsuccessfully sued to add a paper trail to the machines, which he says cannot meet a state requirement for manual recounts."
Read article...
E-Voting machines lost 245 votes in Florida precinct
St. Petersburg Times
"Rob MacKenna, Democratic challenger for supervisor of elections, accused incumbent Buddy Johnson Friday of providing an 'inaccurate and misleading account' of his office's loss of 245 votes in the August primary and suggested Johnson 'should be drawing a paycheck elsewhere.' In a noon news conference, MacKenna backed his charges with evidence from an internal report on 245 votes lost when an elections worker mistakenly left a touch screen voting machine in the 'test' mode. The report and a Friday St. Petersburg Times story detailing it say the Supervisor of Elections' staff looked for the lost votes for 13 days without ever informing Johnson or state election officials of the 245-vote discrepancy... It was inaction by Johnson' office, MacKenna said in calling for Johnson's resignation, that allowed a statutory 10-day period for challenging an election to expire while his staff was still trying to hunt down the missing 245 votes." Read article...
Stupid Americans. Serves them right for not banning all computerized voting machines outright.
Posted by Calvin at November 5, 2004 02:18 PMthat's insane
Posted by: vetiver at November 5, 2004 06:54 PMi got America, the book, written by the fine folks at Jon Stewart's Daily Show, for my birthday and it's got some choice paragraphs on the false democracy that is America. I reccommend it purely for it's introduction to democracy chapter. Brilliant stuff. It's funny because it's so goddamn sad.
Posted by: sage at November 8, 2004 09:45 AMLove that guy - we saw a Daily show this weekend where he was saying that the whole election iwin lied down to the morality issues ... proving that not an illegal war, nor corruption, nor healthcare, or deficit, or economy, NOTHING could be so bad as to be worse that the though of two guys kissing. His piece was brillant - he figured it was a revenge vote because New York and California control the media, but the rest of the contry controls the vote...
Yeah, I think I'll pickup that book.
Posted by: Calvin at November 8, 2004 12:23 PM