As regular readers of this blog know (and I like to assume I have some), if you want to make sure your vote counts, use a paper ballot!
While this Brad Blog posting, “Election Watchdog Group Compiles Stunning List of Recent ‘Problems Facing Voters Nationwide’,” lists problems with voter registration, it also highlights some of the problems with voting machines. “And keep in mind … the myriad electronic voting issues we’ve been reporting here [at Brad Blog] of late”:
“touch-screen votes flipping” in WV
“paper ballot electronic tabulators that can’t count correctly”
[voting machines] ‘that add thousands of “phantom votes”‘
[voting machines] that “drop thousands of real” votes
that keep “cropping up, yet again, across the country.”
I want to quote from the “touch-screen votes flipping” posting:
Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes
Jackson County touch-screens switched votes, 3 residents say
At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.
Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk’s office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.
“When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain,” said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.
…
Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem.
“When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor’s office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.
“The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican,” Thomas said.
…
“Jackson County is a Republican county. I am a registered Republican, but I have been voting Democrat since the 1990s.”
Thomas, who brought his daughter with him to the polls, said she had the same problem.
Make sure your vote counts, use a paper ballot!