Brad Friedman Byon 5/18/2010, 3:04pm PT

Reports of votes flipping on the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines used in Carroll County, Arkansas, have led to a call for removal of the machines. Who could have predicted it?

[Oh, yeah, we did, in our backgrounder on today's election in AR, as based on years of the same exact problem happening, on the same exact machines, over and over again, in election after election, in Arkansas and many other states alike, where officials are still in utter and shameful denial.]

This report is somewhat unique in that it comes from a candidate for County Clerk who has called for the removal of the machines, and is reportedly supported by affidavits from a Circuit Court Judge and one of his employees who both reported their votes flipping from the County Clerk candidate to his opponent during early voting on two separate days...

From today's Carroll County News...

BERRYVILLE --- A request for a temporary restraining order that seeks to remove all electronic voting machines was filed Friday by F. Owen Kendrick, a candidate for county clerk. As of Monday, no action had been taken on that request. In his petition, Kendrick claims two early voters using an electronic voting machine at the clerk's office in Berryville intended to vote for him when the vote went to his opponent, incumbent County Clerk Jamie Correia. Those voters, according to affidavits attached to the request, were Circuit Court Judge Gerald Kent Crow and one of his employees, Nadine Holland. Both stated their votes for Kendrick initially went to Correia, and both said they were able to correct their vote after reviewing their choices. According to the affidavits, Crow voted May 4, and Holland on Thursday, May 13. Her vote took place late in the day, after 4 p.m., election workers say.

...

Kendrick, in his civil filing that names Correia and members of the Carroll County Election Commission, claims there was machine tampering "as to cause the machine to mis-record the actual votes cast."

Amusingly, election officials in the county are still in denial, and still telling media that there is nothing to worry about --- while failing to tell the same media that there is absolutely no way to know, and no evidence to prove, that any vote ever cast on an ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machine (or any Direct Recording Electronic machine, made by any vendor), during any election for any candidate or initiative on the ballot, has ever been recorded accurately as per any voter's intent...

According to election officials, public testing of the machines took place prior to the start of early voting, and there are fail-safe systems in place to assure accurate vote counts.

That is, of course, nonsense. There are no more effective "fail-safe systems" in place on such machines than there are for "blowout preventers" on deep water oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. County Clerks and other election officials who still force voters to vote on such systems, given all that we now know about these 100% faith-based machines, should be ashamed of themselves.

UPDATE: An additional report from the Harrison Daily Times explains why Kendrick was unable to get court action on his request for a temporary restraining order to discontinue use of the ES&S touch-screen systems in his small county in Northern Arkansas:

[A]s a witness in the case, Judge Crow couldn’t act on Kendrick’s petition for a temporary restraining order removing the electronic voting machines from early voting. He said he was unsuccessful Friday in finding a judge in Boone County who would act on the Carroll County case. Kendrick said he didn’t know how else to get action on Monday, the final day of early voting, but he was going to call the secretary of state, who is in charge of elections at the state level.

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