NOVEMBER Harper's Mag - KERRY loses 1,000 of Florida votes

Written up on the Baltimore Chronicle Website:

http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/102804Palast.shtml

CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT!
FLORIDA'S COMPUTERS HAVE ALREADY COUNTED THOUSANDS OF VOTES FOR GEORGE W. BUSH

by Greg Palast

Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush. That is, the mechanics of the new digital democracy boxes "spoil" votes at a predictably high rate in African-American precincts, effectively voiding enough votes cast for John Kerry to in a tight race, keep the White House safe from the will of the voters.

~~~~~~~~~~~~read the rest of the article folks!!!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~

buying new optical scanners for the precincts that need them in states like Florida that have high "spoilage" rates or don't have enough equipment and tend to have long lines? This is an idea that I actually sent to MoveOn.org way back when. It could hardly be looked upon as a partisan issue, because they're just trying to make sure that votes are counted. Just think of the millions of dollars that we spent on TV advertising, while we were basically giving votes away in Florida and Ohio because the precincts were properly equipped.

And why is the spoilage rate allowed to be so high? Shouldn't there be something in the LAW that states that if a ballot is not read by the scanner, that it must be rescanned, and if that doesn't work, it must be hand counted if at all possible?

It can be set to either spit back an unreadable ballot so the voter can do it over,
or it can swallow it unread.

Guess which way the switch got set in the Democratic districts
(which were also equipped with the wrong pens in some cases,
greatly increasing the number of unreadable ballots).

Where did you get this information? Can it be corroborated? Did it happen in Ohio, also?

Questions, questions. This is enough to set one's hair on fire.

Excellent point you've made. :thumbsup: