Complaints of vote flipping in Tennessee and West Virginia on early voting days, are repeats of what happened in many states and localities throughout the United States in 2004, and 2006.

 

Touch screen (DREs) voting is the most unsecure, subject to manipulation and hacking, and error prone method of voting.  These machines can never be trusted to record a vote correctly.

 

Most of these machines are manufactured by Republican owned companies and it apparently depends on whether election officials in states and localties are Republican or Democratic, which many of us have followed since the passage of HAVA, as to whether touch screen machines are in preferred, widespread use. 

 

There is no hard copy (a ballot)  so the accuracy of the vote (whether it went to the correct candidate) is impossible to prove.  Often, the screen will display that the vote is correct when the opposite is true.

 

Guess which election officials just love these machines? .Hint: it's McSame's party.

 

BradBlog explains: "Now comes the vote-flipping on touch-screen machines in Davidson County (Nashville), TN where early voting has also begun. This time, the problems occurred for David and Patricia Earnhardt, the director and executive producer of the award-winning election integrity documentary, Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections which details the history of problems with electronic voting across the nation and some of the whistleblowers and EI advocates who've helped to bring the matter to light. [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is prominently featured in the film.]

"The Earnhardts' story of what happened to them last Friday when, among other things, Patricia's attempt to vote for Obama on the ES&S touch-screen wouldn't register at all, and at one point, with a poll-worker trying to help, had actually registered a vote for Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney....

"The machines in both TN and WV need to be taken out of use and impounded immediately. So far, it's been Democrats, again, who are being affected by these problems, while votes are flipping from Democratic candidates to others. While the DNC and the Obama campaign ought to be raising holy hell, so far they are not..

"The same ES&S iVotronic touch-screens now failing in WV and TN were responsible for losing some 18,000 votes in a very close FL Congressional race in Democratic-leaning Sarasota County in 2006, where the race went to the Republican by just 369 votes. Ironically, the race in FL's 13th Congressional district was for former FL-SoS Katherine Harris' old House seat. Though the race was challenged in Congress, under the Federal Contested Elections Act, the House Democrats eventually dismissed the case, even though an explanation for the disappeared 18,000 votes was never found

"A startling expose on the lack of quality control and regular vote-flipping on ES&S iVotronics aired, to almost no fanfare in the corporate media, on HDNet in 2007 (watch it here).

"In 2007 we had the displeasure of attending a meeting of the Davidson County, TN Election Commission ourselves. While the Democrats on the committee were in the majority, the three hapless Democratic members were run roughshod over by the two Republicans who virtually ran the entire meeting themselves.

"The Republican who seemed to be in charge of things, Commissioner Lynn Greer, while the actual Chair Eddie Bryan did almost nothing, actually told us after the meeting --- and after we'd spoken during it, to warn about the troubles they would have with their touch-screen systems --- that "paper ballots are the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on America."

"It seemed as though he actually believed those words as they came out of his mouth.

"In 2007, CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen [a Democrat] found ES&S iVotronic touch-screens to be so unreliable, and prone to malicious attacks, they were decertified in the state for all but optional use by voters with disabilities, in order to meet federal requirements for such voters."