We’ve got a lot of mopping up to do around here today, tomorrow and in the days and weeks ahead. There are still races outstanding, recounts apparently coming and, despite encouraging reported results yesterday, an electoral system left in shambles. If you haven’t noticed or guessed, yes, we intend to hold President Obama to this remark (and many more) from his victory speech last night.
Keep in mind, by the way, that while the President was promising to “fix that” problem, at 2am ET, voters were actually still reportedly in line to vote in Miami-Dade County, FL. An American disgrace.
For the moment, however, we’re scrambling to prepare for our KPFK/Pacifica Radio show an hour from now, during which we’ll have plenty to discuss, and will also be joined by Bob Fitrakis of Ohio’s Free Press, to discuss the matter of OH Sec. of State’s Jon Husted’s last-minute, uncertified, “experimental” software installed secretly on the vote tabulators of 39 Buckeye State counties and Fitrakis’ day in two different courtrooms challenging it yesterday. [UPDATE: That interview is now posted here.]
So, for now, two quick things. One: Our usual reminder that while much of the front-end voter suppression stuff yesterday was plainly obvious, it’s often not until the days and, sometimes, weeks or more after any given election that the most serious concerns about election integrity issues having to do with things like voting machines and computer tabulators begin to come to light. And two: Since we were so buried yesterday chasing down incoming reports and talking about what was going on on more media outlets than we care to count, we didn’t get to offer a compiled list of reporting voting system problems.
Here’s a few of those problems that we can all start digging into a bit…
This list, compiled by Steve Watson, was published at a website I don’t usually link to, for various reasons. In this case, however, the list is a very helpful roundup of just some of the news stories published by other sites which bear more investigation…
The Toledo Blade reports that some 100 voters were unable to cast ballots this morning in Bedford, Ohio, because a voting machine was not working. Officials said that a memory card had to be replaced. Long lines led to people walking away.
In Dubuque, Iowa, more voters were delayed when machines failed to operate for around 45 minutes after the polling station opened.
Reports from across North Carolina, one of the key swing states, are pouring in suggesting that voting machines are flipping votes from one candidate to the other.
In Greensboro, “a voter complained that they tried to vote for Mitt Romney three times but that the ballot cast was instead for Barack Obama. Other voters in Guilford County and in some other parts of the state said they experienced similar issues.â€
In Charlotte, another voter reported the same problem.
In Rehoboth, Massachusetts problems with voting machines were also noted. The machines officials are using are 14 years old, according to the report. Problems were also reported in Tewksbury, Massachusetts.
In Milford Township, Pennsylvania, three voting machines stopped working after just one hour of voting. After a technician got them working again, one of them broke down a second time, causing waiting voters to begin discussing their distrust of the machines and the potential for voter fraud.
In Crawford County, problems with machines were also reported. They had not been set to the correct time, so were unable to be used for a short period of time.
In Missouri, the Secretary of State’s office has been forced to respond after numerous voters claimed that machines were flipping votes for Romney to votes for Obama.
In Pittsburgh, voters have reported multiple problems with voting machines.
In Sandy Springs, Georgia, hundreds of people were delayed when voting machines went down at around 11 a.m.
In Nashville, Tennessee, technical issues with the machines were reported by many voters, while in Chattanooga, machines malfunctioned, meaning some voters had to put their ballots in the machine without them being scanned.
In Fredericksburg, Northern Virginia, hundreds of voters were turned away as all of the electronic voting machines at one polling station failed to operate. Polling workers only had 50 paper ballots available. Worse still, some voters who used the machines were told that their votes would not count if they had placed them before 8am.
In Spartanburg County, South Carolina, voting machines have failed to work all day and election officials have twice run out of paper ballots.
In Faulkner County, Arkansas, machines were reported inoperable.
Some areas in Virginia reported voting machine problems.
Here’s one more:
Crawford, TX:
“George W. Bush accidentally voted for Barack Obama.”
Witnesses say that poll workers refused his request to redo his vote as it would violate state law.
Bush was then “ambushed†by Suzanna Everett of the Waco Times. “Mr. President,” she asked, “Fox News is reporting that you’ve accidentally voted for Barack Obama. Would you care to comment?”
Bush said he did, but blamed it on “the incompetence of the folks who designed the ballot.” He claimed that the screen was “maladjusted,” adding: “You shouldn’t put the senators and the congress people and the presidents all jumbled together like that. It’s too crowded. Just confuses folks.”
Herman Cain hadda voting problem too…
So the GMO Labeling initiative in California lost. I came over here *just in case* you had something to say about that, Mr. Bradblog.
I’m having a really hard time believing people wouldn’t pass that labeling law. Where can I get some info? Who’s talking about this? Where is the conversation? Is there any conversation? Or am I the only person wondering?
I mean, I thought you were from California, and I’ve been wondering about those Inka-Vote machines in L.A. County. But you don’t seem to talk about California at all. Every time I come over here it’s all about everywhere else.
The W misvoting story is a hoax. Such a waste of a good story, but it’s just a joke.
Any word about MN’s 6th district having problems? It blows my mind that Bachmann won again. How can someone who is visibly nuts and a national laughingstock get that many votes? Starting to wonder if the 6th district has a high concentration of Christian Bipolar Narcissists – people who could look at her and think “yeah, she’s totally normal.”
@Lori, Bachmann does have the same office address as Dominion Voting System, just saying.
The International Observers concerns…
“accuracy of voter lists, the transparency of campaign finance, recount procedures and access for international election observers.
Eight states denied OSCE observers; Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Two, Alaska and Tennessee, offered restricted access which the OSCE refused.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-election/international-observers-cite-concerns-in-us-vote/article5072524/
Shhh Brad’s sleeping.
C. Burkey –
Well, ya know, there are 50 states, more than 4000 voting jurisdictions and several thousand races and ballot initiatives across all of them yesterday. Meanwhile, I’m just one guy.
That said, we’ve got lots of stuff here about California and even the crappy inka-a-vote system here in L.A. Hit the ol’ search button amigo!
For the first our district was using optical scanners to count paper ballots. What bothers me is that the poll workers were recording the ballot number for each voter. That makes me think that my vote is not confidential and private anymore.
My hope is we can get paper trail and a voters paper receipt in EVERY state before any more elections are conducted. I just hope most others feel the same way. Also I would like to see 5 years of tax returns be released to be required to run for president
I have been wondering today what the chances that (Anonymous) is responsible for the election not being stolen. They warned Rove not to pull anything and maybe that scared Ohio and Florida from the now famous voter shift seen in earlier elections.
I’m glad to see some Romney voters appeared to have problems with machines flipping to Obama. That could make this issue get a little more traction if the other side starts demanding transparency too.
It seems like the problems this time around were again, more at the local level. The voting problems were the ones we have seen in the past voting machines not working in highly Democratic polling areas, some vote flipping, and some supression problems. Voter supression was not as bad as it could have been because of the courts system. I have not heard of a statewide attempt to alter the election.
Because of the attitude and speculation by the right I thought there was going to be something bigger than local tinkering. Rove was surprised that Ohio didn’t go his way. He is usually more reserved and arrogant about his expectations. He was more upset than I have ever seen him. But he wasn’t the only one.
I was seriously concerned that there would be a major national attempt to alter the election results through hacking computers. The right’s overly arrogant speculation could have been that they had been drinking their own Kool-Aid, but I think they had reason to believe it would turn out the way they predicted. Brad, how much do you think Anonymous played in allowing the results to occur the way it did?
FBI Forensic Computer Crime Experts Asked To Investigate Romney-Owned Machines
The Green Party is asking the FBI to send in forensic computer crime experts to investigate the software Romney-owned Solamere has put into Cincinnati, Ohio and other swing state voting machines.
The link is not working Orangutan.
Husted’s Last Minute ‘Cold Feet’ patch
Hon, Election Protection just hit the big time — this season’s main arc, on SCANDAL? The ongoing coverup of the murder of a programmer who died because of his secret code for voting machines. Yes, *way*….
http://www.tvovermind.com/scandal-2/scandal-2-05-review-olivia-pope-is-living-foul/
The Bachmann election is likely legit…we have all paper ballots in MN and we audit randomly selected precincts 2 weeks after election regardless how lopsided races are. bachmann is in very Red district a newbie Dem with nonAmericans recognition got to within 1 percentage point. That means lots o lots of Repubs voted for a Dem, can’t be fun for them. When MN recounted Franken Coleman election by hand, tallies came out very simarily but were a net pick up for Feanken due to machines tending to undervote Dems a tich (bad marks machine doesn’t pick)
In MN Franken Coleman election, Coleman was up 200 some votesa after end of coma swing and certified results, by end of hand recount, Franken was up about 50. After a series of challenges ate asked ballots and are view of improperly rejected ansentee ballots, Franken ended up winning by 200+ votes after that was all sorted thru. So machine count in a big state wide race was off by about 250 votes comaores to hand recount, mostly due to undergoes machine rejected but humans could understand. In Bachmann race, right now she is up by 4000+ votes in a much smaller race….if standard canvassing yields a much closer tally, then maybe recount in order.
In MN Franken Coleman election, Coleman was up 200 some votes after end of canvassing and certified results,, then, by end of hand recount, Franken was up about 50. After a series of challenges improperly rejected absentee ballots, Franken ended up winning by 200+ votes after that was all sorted thru. So machine count in a big state wide race was off by about 250 votes compared to hand recount, mostly due to undervotes machine rejected but humans could understand. This is with statewide 3 million votes cast. In Bachmann race, right now, she is up by 4000+ votes in a much much smaller race….if standard canvassing of Bachmann race yields a much closer tally, then maybe recount in order.
With this many people voting and totally not prepared for the volume of voters, the only solution I can see is Compulsory Voting and with it voter registration.
I know Brad don’t like this next part because of potential vote buying, but everyone is going to have to get their ballots mailed to them and turn them in in person. Otherwise they’re going to insist on internet voting, which is waay worse IMO. By mail also, it gives the voter time to study the candidates/issues.
I haven’t figured out how to keep our vote private either way, without the potential for GOP ballot fraud.
All I know is if we make it too costly no matter how it ends up, they will go to internet voting.
Thanks Brad. I did do the search as you suggested, and learned about what happened when you voted in 2008 and then wrote to the acting L.A. County Registrar. Sounds like it didn’t go very well.
If there’s anything more recent, I couldn’t find it via the search function. I summarized things in a post at my site:
http://exiledinhollywood.blogspot.com/2012/11/california-voters-say-no-to-gmo.html
Jon Rappoport has a post about the GMO initiative. As it turns out, a number of votes in L.A., OC and two other counties have not even been counted; however, Monsanto’s tallying up a win against 37 already. And several people I talked to said they voted against it because it would “make food cost more.” Here’s Rappoport’s article:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/vote-fraud-who-destroyed-prop-37-on-election-night/
From the Rappoport report:
I spoke with Erin Madigan White, media relations manager at AP. I asked her whether AP had made the projections for Prop 37 to media outlets.
She emailed me the following tidbit. It was not quite an answer to my question, but it was illuminating:
“To clarify: AP does not make ‘projections,’ but bases our reporting on counting real votes from every precinct. As our story notes specifically, ‘With all the state’s precincts reporting, Proposition 37 failed 53.1 percent to 46.9 percent.’â€
When someone gives you this kind of sleight-of-hand maneuver, it’s called a clue. Let’s start with this phrase: “With all the state’s precincts reporting.†The precincts were all reporting PARTIAL results. Even today, there are 3.3 million votes in CA still to be counted.
This tells you that AP was lying. That’s right. Let’s call it what it was. They were lying about “all precincts.†It was an intentional con.
#8 Dixie Blood. Back in the 1970’s & 80’s I voted on numbered paper ballots but the numbers were on perforated tabs that we’d tear off and hand to the poll worker just before depositing our ballot in the box. They were numbered for auditing. By numbering all ballots you could account for every single one between the unused ones and the torn off tabs and the tab count should equal the number of ballots voted.
You should ask your local elections office (part of the county clerks office for me) how voter privacy is maintained with with the numbered ballots and they should have a good answer for you. If not make some noise.
Do you think Romeny’s ORCA registration system used on election day by his on the ground staff would have been used to cast votes at the last minute for those that did not show up in States were Romney owned voting machines? Is this why Rove reacted why he did on FOX News?
I would also like to comment that Romney met with Petraous in August, Benghazi happened Sept 11, then it was made an election issue.
Romeny would have done anything to become President.
I think both Romney and Petraous got their hands caught in the cookie jar and that they are being able to walk away, save face.
is this good for the American People?
Great blog. Is Karl Rove headed for the slammer? I just saw this and thought that you might want to read it:
http://jobsanger.blogspo…foiled-by-anonymous.html
UGH! Copy and paste didn’t work for the comment #25 earlier post
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2012/11/theft-of-election-foiled-by-anonymous.html
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/
2012/11/theft-of-election-foiled-by-anonymous.html
Just put comment 28 after comment 26 in your address bar