Feedburner
Election Day, 2006
Somehow, I am not surprised. It is, after all, election day, and this kind of cr@p has been seen before.
There are reports throughout Pennsylvania that the new electronic voting machines are not working properly, registering votes for the wrong candidate. It isn't consistent one way versus the other to be considered a plot to move the election towards one camp, but just watch what will be claimed at the end of the day.
More disturbing are these events outlined on Fox News, and elsewhere:
Graffiti that included a Communist-style hammer and sickle along with the name of Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., was spray-painted on an overpass and a department store outside Springfield. Weldon's campaign accused backers of Democratic challenger Joe Sestak.
It's laughable that they would try and depict a Republican as a Communist, especially since leftist ideology is found mainly in such political parties as the Green Party and Democratic Party. Whoever did it must be pretty clueless as to what a communist is. And this is in the state of "Minnesota nice?"
Problems also were reported in many states, including Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin.In New Jersey, voters in at least seven jurisdictions attempting to vote for Republican Kean and found their machines "locked" for Menendez, according to GOP Committee attorney Mark Sheridan, who called it a "disturbing and developing trend" emerging at the polls.
Sheridan said Republicans are trying to figure out if this is a result of computer error or malfeasance on the part of poll workers. He said it would be too much of a coincidence for anything other than "fraud."
In the case of New Jersey, if it is fraud, and the computer programs have been tampered with, I believe it will be fairly easy to determine who the culprits are. There should be a security audit trail in place on the computers to trace tampering to specific login IDs.
There has been discussion for several years raising the potential of such tampering with computerized voting machines, especially where a paper printout of the vote is not produced. I would hope that the voting machine companies would have put such safeguards in place to allow tracing of any tampering with the systems back to the person doing the tampering. If they haven't, then it is time to make that a requirement for computerized voting machines.
Pulled this off of the Pennsylvania GOP site:
HARRISBURG - Republican State Committee Chairman Robert A. Gleason Jr. issued the following statement after hearing reports that voting machines have been malfunctioning across the Commonwealth."We need to make sure this election is fair and that every single Pennsylvania voter gets an opportunity to cast their ballot. Machine failures are occurring in various parts of the state, and we need to take the appropriate steps to ensure an accurate vote. The Pennsylvania Republican State Committee advises the following actions be taken:
1. Counties should impound and take out of service all affected machines and turn them off.
2. These defective machines need to be replaced.
3. Do not recalibrate the defective machines. This will affect the integrity of the vote count from the defective machine, because once these machines are recalibrated the evidence of the defect and the miscast votes due to machine error will be lost forever.
4. The affected counties should start using emergency paper ballots where the machines are defective, which is the remedy provided for in the Pennsylvania Election Code.
5. Counties should not extend voting hours, but if they do voters who cast ballots after 8 pm need to vote by provisional ballot.
It is critical to keep in mind bullet item #3: do not recalibrate/re-initialize, what ever, the defective machines. Doing so can eliminate the possibility of tracing any tampering. If you have a good audit trail of what is done to the system, should be able to trace it.
Lot's happening, not sure how much of it I'll get to write about as I have a dinner to go to with my State Rep, Pat Garofalo. Hope he wins his re-election. We need him in Minnesota.
Tags: