Don't shoot me I am only the messenger ELECTILE DYSFUNCTION

While investigating problems with e-voting I uncovered a story where a "glitch" seemed to work against the re-pugs as well as the democrats.

Now this was a story about early voting in a state race. And it is based on the complaint of a republican candidate for judge and three other republican voters and of course democrats complained as well.

Here is a link to the original story

http://www.observer-online.com/articles/2004/10/26/news/story2.txt

It was the Sequoia machines, the same ones who in another story defaulted to George Bush in the presidential race if the voter didn't press hard enough on the screen. Why is it that the "glitches" are blamed on the voter, not the programming?

If the machines can produce faulty votes because of irregular electrical current this issue needs to be publicized, NOW!

We will never know how many voters had their votes miscounted because of this problem and what other brands of e-voting machines suffer from this error.

Anyway, the point is that we need election reform, we cannot trust our current system. We cannot blame the victim here, when every vote is supposed to count. I know that programmers can build error checking and idiot proofing into programs, businesses do it all the time.

Voting irregularities need to be debated in a national discussion, perhaps if we bring these issues up under the banner of electile dysfunction or election reform, or voting reform instead of the F word, we might be able to get the media to start covering this story.

Whatever it takes to push this story forward needs to be considered. I don't know if an investigation will overturn this election but I do know that we need to get the ball rolling or we will never be able to have faith in our democracy again.

of a good attention getting name. It is something you would expect to see on The Daily Show. I like it.

if it's an 'across the board' problem. I hate to sound so partisan, but I think we all know as long as they're getting their way, many Republicans aren't going to care about this. If all the errors go their way, in other words, they're not going to care (the same is probably true of some Dems, I guess, though I can't say I necessarily feel that way myself). If some of the errors are going our way, however, we might be able to get them fired up about the systems and their weaknesses. They don't see it as a problem until it's personal -- if their candidates might lose through this system, too, then they can't just call it 'sour grapes' and dismiss the concerns of people who really just want a fair vote with all votes desired to be cast being cast, and all votes that are cast being counted.

because they thought (and still do) it benefits them. However, this time "conventional wisdom" (who and whatever that is) is that Repubs actually benefited from increased turnout.

They also increased their numbers in less educated people who tend to have more spoiled ballots (sorry - I hate the generalization but it is out there) which may be because poorer areas have the least reliable voting methods still.

If they think some of their voters are also getting disenfranchised maybe they will be more interested in doing something to fix the problems.

Wishful thinking? Probably.

may be as much the fault of unprepared poll workers as it is ignorance or misinformation in the voting pool itself, but you're right about it being an uneasy generalization.

As with anything else, conservatives can be convinced to care about these things only through enlightened self-interest. If they think their voters and votes might be lost or spoiled, maybe they'll get up off their asses and help us fix this. You're right, though -- as long as things are going their way, I think it would be very difficult to convince them there was a problem, and since they've managed to work their way around to running the show, the only thing that might scare them into it is the thought that the same tactics they use to suppress Democratic votes might backfire and suppress theirs, as well.

I never understood how they could be so blase about the thought of hacking of electronic voting, especially since most hackers consider themselves anarchists -- and anarchists are generally radical leftists, not cons. I'd think the danger of a massive hack would scare the crap out of them, since it likely wouldn't go their way, but as long as things do go their way they're not going to care.

all those heavily democratic precincts in Florida with outrageous discrepancies in favor of Bush?

You know what pisses me off, no one has pulled this all together. The people seem to be scrambling around trying to find the answer with the information that's floating around. With all the misinformation coupled with problems of not only the machines but the false terror threats, how does anyone expect the people to find out the truth. Why isn't our government doing more? Why isn't the media doing more? Are we going to go through this again four years from now? Why did we have to go through it this time around? Wasn't four years enough time to fix it after the first fiasco? It didn't take the media long to get the Abu Ghraib story recognized. I want to know why this doesn't seem to be important enough!

We need to get over the north Florida counties that have voted Republican in the last 3 or 4 national elections. I lived in Tallahassee for over 12 years and those counties are full of good ole boy Dixiecrat types that vote whichever way the robed tell them too, be it the white robes or the black robes. They still waive the rebel flag around with pride and are not democrats in any real sense of the national party.

The fact is in those counties if you are registered as a republican, then you more than likely don't have candidates on the local ballots and never get to vote in primary elections.

Those counties are one of the main reasons that the media and right are so quickly dismissing the real voting problems and irregularities as fringe INTERNET conspiracy theories.

We need to get the TRUTH out about the areas all over the country where real problems that are easily verifiable occurred and blow the smokescreen out of the way of this important story.


I apologize to any real Democrats in Rural and North Florida, I was referring to the Dixiecrats when I categorized more of you than I meant to with that statement. We need to oust the Dixiecrats and replace them with Democrats, while we are reforming our election process.