RWers finally become 'believers' concerning 'liberal conspiracy theories' about vote flips on 100% unverifiable touch-screens...

Brad Friedman Byon 11/4/2014, 2:17pm PT

By our count, Virginia is now the 7th state to report touch-screen voting flipping in the 2014 election (though we may have missed a few in Pennsylvania and elsewhere).

During Early Voting, prior to today's mid-term, we've covered 100% unverifiable touch-screen votes reportedly flipping on screen in Texas (D to R), in Illinois (R to D), in Tennessee (NO to YES on anti-choice initiative), in Maryland (R to D) and in Arkansas (unclear which direction the votes were flipping in several different counties), and in North Carolina, where votes were said to be flipping from D to R in the crucial, neck-and-neck U.S. Senate race there.

Now, "Republicans and Democrats alike" are reporting votes flipping in a U.S. House race in Virginia Beach and Newport News, and one of the Republican candidates involved has supplied a video tape of the flipping votes cast on the town's Diebold AccuVote touch-screen systems...

According to The Virginia-Pilot today:



...

Commissioner Edgardo Cortes said 32 of Virginia Beach’s 820 [Diebold] AccuVote TSX machines had been pulled from service by 3:30 p.m. Another four were pulled in Newport News, where most votes are recorded on paper ballots. Republicans and Democrats alike reported problems Tuesday using touchscreen voting machines in Virginia Beach and Newport News, with some claiming they almost cast ballots for candidates they did not support....Commissioner Edgardo Cortes said 32 of Virginia Beach’s 820 [Diebold] AccuVote TSX machines had been pulled from service by 3:30 p.m. Another four were pulled in Newport News, where most votes are recorded on paper ballots. U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell asked the Virginia Beach Voter Registrar Donna Patterson to use paper ballots after his campaign heard from 25 supporters who had problems with their machines. Each person said the machines tried to register votes for his opponent, Suzanne Patrick, according to Rigell.

...

Cortes said the request is under consideration, but that he isn’t very supportive of it. He noted that there are not enough paper ballots at the city’s 94 precincts to handle all of the voters.

Here's the video posted along with the article above...

As we have reported many times over the years, and again in several of our reports this year (beginning with our first vote-flipping report of the season when touch-screen votes were reportedly flipping D to R in Texas and R to D in Illinois), officials usually chalk these problems up to calibration issues with the touch-screen itself. That is most likely the case, as we've previously explained, since any effort to steal votes on touch-screen systems would be much more effective by simply registering the vote on screen as the voter intends, and then recording it any way a bad guy might like inside the system. Rigging an election in that way is far more effectively and virtually impossible to detect.

That said, it's certainly possible there are lousy or dumb hackers out there. Either way, the larger point, even when the system work as designed, is that touch-screen voters are 100% unverifiable, as we've been pointing out for more than a decade now.

The person who posted the video above, who goes by @TheConservVoice on Twitter, adds a comment at YouTube to say:

I've heard many reports that this is "just a calibration issue." I will say this... when I went to page 2 and began voting for city council members, I touched inside each box (like I did on the first screen) and this time had NO issues whatsoever. So, I don't know except, this is always happening during elections, and this is always benefiting the Democrats.

While the poster's description of the problem still does not rule out touch-screen calibration issues, there is no way to know either way when voting on such systems.

This voter's claim however that this problems is found "always benefiting the Democrats" is patently false. In fact, reports of votes flipping from Democrats to Republicans (and others) have been far more prevalent over the years. We know, because we've been forced to report them over and over (and over) again as they've happened over the years.

But, again, that doesn't matter. It shouldn't happen to any voter, which is why we've been calling for bans on this type of horrible, unverifiable e-voting system for years --- even back when rightwinger Andrew Breitbart used to endlessly mock us on Twitter for doing so, back when Republicans like him generally believed reports of touch-screen votes flipping were little more than a "liberal conspiracy theory" by "sore losers" or some such.

We thank the Virginia Beach voter in this case for having the presence of mind to take video of the problem, as we have long recommended. While we've shown many such videos over the years, in the early days, as far back as 2004, Republicans and Election Officials would either ignore them, or simply claim it didn't happen at all, even when videos and countless reports from voters revealed otherwise.

If this year's reports are any indication, it appears Rightwingers finally don't think the issue is simply being made up "Democrat sore losers" any more, and that's very good news. Welcome to the fight for actual election integrity!

Unfortunately, like person who posted the YouTube video above --- who also wrote "PATRIOTS OF AMERICA..... Don't let voter fraud continue! This may happen to you one day!" --- it seems many of those folks still have a lot to learn about the difference between "voter fraud" and election fraud (and voting machine failure).

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Here's a round-up of just our recent coverage of touch-screen vote-flipping reports during the 2014 mid-term general elections. (Search The BRAD BLOG's archives for scores more over the past 10+ years):

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