As The Company's iVotronic Touch-Screen Voting Machines Continue to Fail Across Her State, Betty Ireland Recognizes Recently-Resigned Exec Gary Greenhalgh for 'Pioneering Use of Technology in Election Process'

Brad Friedman Byon 10/27/2008, 7:43pm PT

We wish we were kidding, but it seems that last Thursday, as ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machines were failing across West Virginia (now reported in at least 6 different counties there), Secretary of State Betty Ireland was presenting an "award of merit" to ES&S vice-president Gary Greenhalgh...

As Kim Zetter reports today at Wired's "Threat Level" blog:

The Gazette's coverage tells us that Ireland, when giving Greenhalgh the award, recognized him as "a pioneer in the use of technology in the election process."

It was the ES&S iVotronic which "pioneered" the loss of some 18,000 votes in the Democratic-stronghold of Sarasota County, FL in 2006. The completely disappeared votes led to loss of Democrat Christine Jennings to her Republican opponent Vern Buchanan in the U.S. House race in Florida's 13th district by 369 votes.

The Gazette also goes on to remind us of just one of the many studies, Ohio's "EVEREST" analysis, which found the ES&S iVotronic touch-screens can be "compromised and modified without detection, conceivably occurring before, during or after an election," presenting "serious risks to election integrity."

That independent analysis led OH SoS Jennifer Brunner to recommend decertification of the ES&S iVotronic system. Apparently it led WV SoS Ireland to keep using them across the entire state and give the recently-resigned ES&S vice-president an award.

Links to our recent stories on ES&S vote-flips and other failures follows, along with our recommended list of steps to take should you find your vote flipping on one of these wholly unverifiable voting machines...

Recent ES&S iVotronic Failures as covered by The BRAD BLOG:

And since the DNC and Obama campaign refuse to take any steps to assure your vote may actually be counted accurately on one of these machines...

What to do if it happens to you:

Call poll supervisors to observe the problem.

Fill out a problem report.

Refuse to vote on that machine.

Request that the machine be taken out of service.

Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be difficult in many cases).

Tell other voters in line which machine it was and that they should NOT vote on that machine!

Report it to county/town election office.

Report it to the Secretary of State.

Call local reporters and tell them the story.

Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) and report it.

866-OUR-VOTE) and report it. Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.

Raise holy hell.

And again, people, please bring a video camera/cell phone camera when you go to vote so you can document these problems on video tape, and then upload them to VideoTheVote.org and YouTube!

(Thanks to VelvetRevolution.us and TrueVote.us for help in compiling these recommendations!)



