Epidemic of ES&S iVotronic Touch-Screen Voting Machine Failures - Now in At Least Two States - Continues to Grow...

Brad Friedman Byon 10/23/2008, 1:22pm PT

From WV's Sunday Gazette Mail today, yet another report of vote-flipping on ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machines...

Martinsburg man says machine switched Democratic vote to Republican 5 times Roger Belozier, a veteran and retired postal worker from Berkeley County, experienced problems with electronic voting machines when he went to vote early in the Martinsburg courthouse. "I reviewed my vote to make sure it was a straight Democratic ticket. But it switched my vote to Republican candidates five different times. I was able to cancel out the Republican votes. "But I am scratching my head. Why did the machine switch my votes five different times? I asked someone to come over and explain it to me," Belozier said on Wednesday. "I am concerned about a lot of people who might not notice or people who might be intimidated. They have to raise their hands and ask for some help."

Every county was told by the SOS to recalibrate all touch-screen machines. This is the ES&S iVotronic machine again and it appears the voter voted straight-party, in this case, as we have warned against, but that's not entirely clear from the article.

Today's report follows reports within the last week of votes flipping from Democratic to Republican (or other) candidates on ES&S iVotronics touch-screens in at least two different WV counties, and in Davidson County (Nashville), TN. Just yesterday, there was a report of votes flipping, on the same machines, from Republican to Democratic in Decatur County, TN.

Enough! We've called for these machines to be immediately impounded, and taken out of service --- just as the GOP called for when Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) received similar reports of touch-screen votes flipping during his unsuccessful 2006 re-election attempt --- and for paper ballots to be made available to all voters instead. To date, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have called for the impounding/removal of these failed voting machines. ES&S is the largest voting equipment supplier in the nation, with systems in dozens of states.



