I am a responsible Republican and proud of it. I am a responsible American and proud of it. Please help me to understand this bail out!

Thanks for creating this blog. I thought it was a very interesting read. It is so interesting reading other peoples personal take on a subject.

[…]Mabuhay, my colleagues and I heard of your blog over at McBrides, so we thought we would take a look. We’ve read several of your posts and we all agree that you have a fine writing style[…]

Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts..

I enjoyed your column about Braxton. He is a cry baby. That Joke at the Free Press, Charlie, is nothing more than a Typical Liberal Democrat just like his publisher.

It’s time for Braxton to get over it and realize no one really gives a damn about how he feels about the web site. There was nothing illegal about the site and the Free Press just used it to help Braxton in his election. Braxton used it for publicity and to get sympathy.

Charlie, it’s time for you to get over it and realize it’s not about you. You need to stay at the Moveon.org site called ENC. No One over here gives a damn about your opinion on anything.

-Jason Plank
WMC-TV

Here is a report in the Arkansas news of vote flipping on ES&S iVotronic Touchscreen machines. Their machines are very new, like ours, but I cannot be sure that they have the same model that North Carolina has.
Also, I have not heard of wide scale vote flipping, but if this is a calibration issue, it could be limited to some machines. Most machines may be properly calibrated. Is this what happened to the voter in Lenoir county?

Vote machine problems reported
By Louis Short/ Sun-Times Staff
Published: Monday, November 27, 2006 8:29 AM CST
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Are you sure the vote you cast for Heber Springs mayor went to the person you chose? Mayoral candidate Jackie McPherson, who is facing incumbent Paul Muse in a current runoff election, called The Sun-Times Tuesday afternoon reporting a problem with the electronic voting machines. “Votes cast for me went to Paul,” he said. “My mother-in-law and her mom went to vote and when they touched my button on the touch screen a vote was cast for Paul. They realized the problem and didn’t finalize their vote.”

McPherson was contacted during the first week of early voting by Bill Orr, reporting the same problem. “He called and reported to me when he cast his ballot on the new touch screen voting devices that instead of the machine showing a vote for me, it showed one for Paul,” McPherson said. “”Bill said he realized this and didn’t finalize his vote. He contacted someone in the County Clerk’s Office and they checked on the machine and fixed the problem, but how many other people have v
The Sun-Times contacted Orr to get his side of the report. “I voted on either the second or third day of early voting for the runoff,” Orr said. “Paul Muse was listed on top and Jackie McPherson was listed on bottom. When I was at the courthouse I was told how to vote using the machine. I punched the button for Jackie and Paul’s name came up. I called a gal in and told her. She said the vote wasn’t finalized. I told her I voted for Jackie and it showed the vote for Paul. The machine was worked on a little while and when I tried it again Jackie’s name came up. It makes you wonder who didn’t catch this when they voted.”

McPherson went to County Clerk Dana Guffey’s Office to check out the reports for himself. “I told her what had been reported to me,” he said. “She didn’t think that was possible. We went to one of the two machines being used for early voting and tested it. Sure enough, when I pushed the screen in my box it showed a vote for Paul. We never finalized the vote an
“I pointed out that my finger was clearly in my voting box but yet the vote went to Paul. I pointed out there was daylight above my finger, between my finger and the box for Paul, but the vote went to him. Each time we went through the process I moved my finger down the screen, into my box more each time. Votes started showing for me nearly at the bottom of my voting box. She recalibrated the machine and it worked, but how many people cast votes for me and didn’t realize the problem when they finalized their vote?”

County Clerk Dana Guffey said McPherson reported the potential problem to her Tuesday. “We tried out both machines,” she said. “One worked fine. The other one, when the screen in his (McPherson’s) voting area was touched, it didn’t work right. Sometimes it worked fine and sometimes it didn’t.”
When McPherson was at Guffey’s office 252 people had voted on the machine in question. On the machine that was working properly there had been 173 votes cast. As of 11 a.m. Wednesday, 462 people had early voted.

The machine was recalibrated. “I had to make the machine realign the touch,” Guffey said. “Once it was recalibrated and the touch was where it was supposed to be, it worked fine. We tried it five or six times and it worked fine.”
None of the votes were actually cast. “Ballots were cast as blank ballots during this testing,” said Guffey.

McPherson contacted Election Commissioner Joe Tournear Tuesday evening. “He said the election would have to go on and I would have to get a court order to review the machines and the problem that obviously exists,” McPherson said.
Tournear was contacted Wednesday morning about the report by McPherson. “Before a ballot is finalized the voter is shown a review page and that shows them who they chose,” he said. “At that point they could see what registered.”

With only two names on the runoff ballot a lot of people might just assume the person they voted for was actually chosen. “At this point we don’t know if voters vote counted as they selected,” said Tournear. “We will have to wait until after the election and Jackie has the right to ask for a recount. If he asks for a recount then we will take the rolls from the machines and recount the votes. We will also look at voting trends to see what the trends were. If during a period there is a heavy trend for one or the other then we will look at it further. It will have to go to a judge for a further investigation.”
McPherson is also questioning machine accuracy for the general election. “This time there are only two people on the ballot,” he said. “But what happened when there were seven people on the ballot for mayor in the general election? How many votes went to the wrong person for the mayor race or other races and the voter didn’t realize it? It’s scary to think these machines can malfunction.”

If you have early voted and during the voting process you thought you made a mistake because the machine showed a different vote cast than you chose, McPherson asks you to call him, Guffey’s office, The Sun-Times, and the election commission
(Want to read the complete story? A modest subscriber fee will give you instant access to the full newspaper online –The Sun-Times “e-Edition”. NO EXTRA CHARGE FOR OUR CURRENT PRINT SUBSCRIBERS! Contact us at 501-362-2425 or send an e-mail to: circulation@thesuntimes.com for pricing, password and user name)
http://www.thesuntimes.com/articles/2006/11/27/news/news01.txt

Comments are limited to 200 words or less.

Iknowit wrote on November 28, 2006 6:32 AM:”This is classic machine miscalibration - to be clear voting machines are ‘configured’ on a local level meaning the calibration is done by election officials locally. The voters need to be educated that they can have the election officials check the screens to be sure they align prior to casting their vote by h itting the submit vote button. Some comments: Regarding the “taking a court order” statement made by the election commissioner: 1. partly true, to get the machine software it would take a court order (thats not going to happen) 2. ‘the election must go on’ statement is ridiculous, they need either a new election commissioner or to file a lawsuit I hope McPherson files a FOI request, gets the poll book pages, compares the signatures to the machine tapes and finds out what he needs. Everyone in Cleburne Co. can request that info with
Regards;
Joyce McCloy
Founder, NC Coalition