Welcome to another episode of the runaway hit of our fall season, What Is This Shit, Anyway? We go now to Texas, where the machines have a mind of their own —or, failing that, anybody's mind except that belonging to the poor bastard trying to vote. From ABC-13 in Houston.

Mickey Blake was one of the voters in those early voting lines in Houston earlier this week. "I hit straight Democratic ticket," Blake said. She says she expected all Democrats to come up on her screen, especially Rep. Beto O'Rourke, but when she got to the last screen to review her choices, she noticed a problem. "It's all Democratic except for Ted Cruz was checked," Blake said. So she backed up and did it again. And again."I tried it a third time and the same thing happened," she said. The same thing happened to Cordell Hosea in Fort Bend County. "When I got to the end, I just so happened that I glanced at the screen, I saw Ted Cruz was selected as my senator," Hosea said. He too voted straight ticket Democrat. But it's not just a Democrat problem. Voters who select straight-party Republican unselect Sen. Cruz and wind up voting for no one. Either way, officials say it's a rare issue that happens, but not to everyone.

Remember back in 2012, when Irish voters got so fed up with their voting machines that the government decided to scrap them? Yeah, that was cool. The only voting machine I ever will trust is made by Eberhard Faber.

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Our series is based, you may recall, in the state of Georgia, where hilarious plot twists abound. The latest is in DeKalb County—already notorious for good government initiatives —where someone allegedly put some stuff in the wrong file and fed it to the office dachshund. From WSB:

Channel 2 investigative reporter Aaron Diamant has learned that leaders of the Democratic Party of Georgia contacted officials in Kemp’s office, claiming the party had evidence that as many as 4,700 DeKalb County voters never received the absentee-by-mail ballots they requested for November’s election.A representative for the secretary of state’s office told Diamant as soon as the call came in, state elections director Chris Harvey and another investigator headed to DeKalb County and met with the county’s elections director and other county election leaders. By email, the chair of DeKalb’s elections board told Diamant that the state Democratic party did hand over a list of about 4,700 registered DeKalb voters the party claims requested absentee ballot forms through a mailer sent out by the party. But in that same email the chairman said: “After reviewing the list of names, there is only evidence that the county received 50 of those voter absentee ballot request forms. All 50 of those forms have been processed. At this time, there is no evidence that there are any missing or lost absentee ballot request forms. The Elections Department receives request forms daily and processes them within three days of receipt. At this time there are approximately 250 forms pending processing.” The secretary of state’s office says it has no proof of any missing absentee ballot requests and is still waiting for the party to provide them with any evidence they may have but that it takes complaints seriously and will continue to investigate.

For those of you new to our breakthrough fall series, the Georgia Secretary of State, whose minions are going to Get Right On This, happens also to be the Republican candidate for governor. Wild and unpredictable!, raves the Daily Segretti. And remember, children, those rats won't fck themselves.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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