INDEPENDENT NEWS

VIDEOS: Vote Flipping on Touch-Screens in WV

Published: Wed 29 Oct 2008 04:17 PM
VIDEOS: Vote Flipping on Touch-Screens in WV
Failure Seen Persisting Even After Election Official 'Recalibrates' Failed Machine!
By Brad Friedman , The BRAD BLOG
Our friends at VideoTheVote.org were able to capture some early coverage of the vote-flipping incidents on ES iVotronic machines in WV. We now have reports of votes flipping from Democratic to Republican (and other) candidates across the states of WV, TN, TX and MO. (See end of article for previous reports, and what you can do if it happens to you.)
Now you can watch the votes flipping on video before your own eyes.
And how, even after an election official supposedly re-calibrates the machine, it still fails to work properly and registers votes incorrectly!...
Here's video of one of the first voters in WV to report the problem after her attempt to vote straight-party Democrat was flipped to straight-party Republican (appx. 2:15 mins)...
And in the following video, Jackson County, WV, County Clerk Jeff Waybright demonstrates actual vote-flips on the ES iVotronic, by showing how the failing machines, when not calibrated properly, can flip a vote from one candidate to any other. It's apparently just a coincidence that, so far, all of the confirmed reports of vote-flips this year have been awayfrom Democratic candidates.
It should also be noted that it doesn't matter what is shown on the screen when a voter votes on one of these god-awful devices which will be used by approximately one-third of American voters this year. The fact is that it's strictly impossible to confirm that any vote ever cast during an election on any Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machine was ever recorded accurately for any candidate or initiative on the ballot, as per the voter's intent.
This video (see above), demonstrating one way that votes flip from one candidate to another on DREs, is also approximately 2:15 mins...
UPDATE: Note how even after Waybright has re-calibrated the machine in the following, the iVotronic still fails to record votes correctly, as a straight Republican ticket is selected, but the machine selected Ralph Nader instead of John McCain! At appx. 1:50 mins into the video...
Moreover, as this video from UC Santa Barbara Computer Security Group as commissioned by the state of California demonstrates, simply because a DRE machine produces a so-called "paper trail" doesn't mean there is any means of accurately verifying the voters' ballots or the final vote counts. Aside from the fact that such "paper trails" most likely will never be counted by anyone anyway, the fact is that these machines are easily tampered with, in about two seconds, such that even the "paper trails" can be hacked without the voter noticing, in such a way that they would match the internal hacked numbers perfectly. In such a case, as demonstrated by UCSB, even a 100% post-election "audit" of the machines "paper trails" would fail to reveal that they had been maliciously tampered with.
Links to our recent stories on ES vote-flips and other failures follow, along with our recommended list of steps to take should you find your vote flipping on one of these wholly unverifiable voting machines...
Recent ES iVotronic Failures as covered by The BRAD BLOG:
10/18/08: ES Vote-Flipping Seen in 2 WV Counties
10/21/08: Election Filmmaker Sees Own Vote Flipped From Dem in TN
10/22/08: Candidate Names Missing on Final Review Screens in SC
10/22/08: Votes Reportedly Flip R to D in Decatur Cty, TN
10/23/08: Vote Flips 5 Times From D to R in Another WV County
10/24/08: Straight-Party Votes Flip D to R in TX
10/25/08: Screen Blanks Out, Another Obama Vote Lost in TN
10/26/08: DNC Claims They're On it, Just Can't Tell Us What They're Doing
10/27/08: ES Vote-Flipping Now Seen in 6 WV Counties
10/27/08: ES VP Given 'Award of Merit' By WV SoS
And since the DNC and Obama campaign refuse to take any steps to assure your vote may actually be counted accurately on one of these machines...
What to do if it happens to you:
Call poll supervisors to observe the problem.
Fill out a problem report.
Refuse to vote on that machine.
Request that the machine be taken out of service.
Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be difficult in many cases).
Tell other voters in line which machine it was and that they should NOT vote on that machine!
Report it to county/town election office.
Report it to the Secretary of State.
Call local reporters and tell them the story.
Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) and report it.
Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.
Raise holy hell.
REMINDER: Please bring a video camera/cell phone camera when you go to vote so you can document these problems on video tape, and then upload them to VideoTheVote.org and YouTube!
(Thanks to VelvetRevolution.us and TrueVote.us for help in compiling these recommendations!)
*************
ENDS
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