Pennsylvania Voting Machine Switches Vote From Barack Obama To Mitt Romney

[FriendlyFire]

Pennsylvania Voting Machine Switches Vote From Barack Obama To Mitt Romney

A Pennsylvania voting machine was taken out of service on Election Day 2012 after it was filmed switching a vote for President Barack Obama to one for his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, NBC News has confirmed.

Mother Jones reported that the machine was recalibrated and returned to service.

"There was a single complaint, so they recalibrated the machine, did a test run, and put it back online. We've had no complaints since then," Mathew Keeler, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, told Mother Jones.

The video of the malfunctioning voting machine was uploaded to YouTube by user "centralpavote." It quickly proliferated across social media and rose to the front page of Reddit's politics forum.

The user, who said he works as a software developer, gave his account of what happend in the YouTube video description:

I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.

This is not the first time a malfunctioning voting machine has been caught on camera. In 2008, a West Virginia voting machine picked the wrong candidates during a video demonstration -- even after the machine had been calibrated.

On Tuesday, claims of voter fraud and voter suppression erupted in Pennsylvania after 75 Republican inspectors in Philadelphia were not able to access polling places, ABC News reports.

Several reports of voter suppression have come out of Ohio, also a crucial battleground state.

African-American early voters in Dayton were allegedly given the wrong ballots on Sunday, according to a Democracy Now report. Additionally, a suit filed Monday in federal district court claims that a company that makes electronic voting systems used in Ohio "improperly approved the use of untested, non-state certified software in voting machines to help tally results," CBS News reports.

Although the Pennsylvania voting machine was reportedly fixed, Jezebel called the glitch "chilling" in light of comments made by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett at a Romney rally on Sunday.

At a Pennsylvania rally with Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Corbett and other Keystone State GOP leaders expressed confidence that the state's electoral votes would go to Romney, despite Obama's three- to five-point lead in state polls, according to ABC News.

In 2011, Corbett decided not to move forward on a plan that would have divided Pennsylvania's Electoral College votes by Congressional district. In a blog for The Huffington Post, conservative commentator John Ziegler wrote that this move would have been "devastating to the Obama campaign."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ine-switches-vote-obama-romney_n_2083015.html

/facepalm

 

[GhostWriter16]

This is sad but may not have been deliberate.

 

[warpus]

What you guys need is some sort of a federal agency that ensures that voting machines are as secure as slot machines in casinos.

Do you have any idea how secure those are? There are INCREDIBLY strict rules and regulations and a whole crapload of red tape you'd have to go through if you wanted to change anything or even open one.

No such rules exist for voting machines.. Boggles the mind, really.

 

[Truronian]

Looks fairly deliberate, probably a rogue programmer/official.

 

[emzie]

I doubt it was much more than an error. If you're going to program in a way to steal the election, you don't make it so obvious.

 

[say1988]

What you guys need is some sort of a federal agency that ensures that voting machines are as secure as slot machines in casinos.

Do you have any idea how secure those are? There are INCREDIBLY strict rules and regulations and a whole crapload of red tape you'd have to go through if you wanted to change anything or even open one.

No such rules exist for voting machines.. Boggles the mind, really.

Or they could go with this new revolutionary technology. I believe it is called a "paper ballot".

 

[FriendlyFire]

In Florida, The Tampa Bay Times reported that hundreds of voters received automated "robo-calls" telling them the election was on Wednesday.

An official told the paper a glitch in the phone system allowed the calls to go through early on Tuesday, telling voters the election was "tomorrow".

"We stopped it immediately when we found out about it," Nancy Whitlock of Pinellas County told the newspaper.

A similar glitch was reported in the US capital Washington.

The Arizona Republic reported that robo-calls directed voters to the wrong polling stations, and that Democrats claimed it was an intentional effort by Republicans to misdirect people amid a tight Senate race.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-elec...a-to-romney-20121107-28x09.html#ixzz2BUU21MQk

/facepalm

 

[innonimatu]

I doubt it was much more than an error. If you're going to program in a way to steal the election, you don't make it so obvious.

That is exactly why you shouldn't care abut obviousness. If you still lose and get caught, you can just say you couldn't possibly be so obvious, it was all a mistake. And if you win it doesn't matter, no one will be able to nail you.
Sometimes power falls to those with the will to take it. Just warning...

 

[Bugfatty300]

But the obviousness means that the first person to see their vote being changed before their eyes it is likely going to immediately report it to officials and therefore no advantage is gained. So having plausible deniability or not doesn't seem to matter much in this case.

 

[Takhisis]

Could be refuge in audacity, contre.

 

[History_Buff]

/facepalm

Welcome to Canada!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

But the obviousness means that the first person to see their vote being changed before their eyes it is likely going to immediately report it to officials and therefore no advantage is gained. So having plausible deniability or not doesn't seem to matter much in this case.

^this

 

[FriendlyFire]

But the obviousness means that the first person to see their vote being changed before their eyes it is likely going to immediately report it to officials and therefore no advantage is gained. So having plausible deniability or not doesn't seem to matter much in this case.

This is the Republican party were talking about here.
Incompetence is practically a by word for the last decade. Who else would pass voter fraud laws and then be caught red handed incompetently trying to switch votes ?

 

[woody60707]

Errors happen. A crap ton of vote just were not just not counted at my pooling place due to error. All those votes were for Obama. But it was in Chicago, so no one cares.


This has been said and proven countless times, voter fraud just doesn't happen at anything close of a meaningful level. International election monitors have been watching the US sense 2002, and not found one speck of meaningful voter fraud. I doubt Mr YouTube had creak this case.

 

[Bugfatty300]

This is the Republican party were talking about here.
Incompetence is practically a by word for the last decade. Who else would pass voter fraud laws and then be caught red handed incompetently trying to switch votes ?

And, unfortunately the only party that's slightly more competent is still so incompetent that they'll let the opposition get away from such an obvious crime.

 

[ace99]

Hahaha it didn;t ghelp republicans!