There have been TWO social media reports that electronic voting machines in Texas have changed votes to favor Clinton/Kaine. In Arlington and Amarillo, two women have said that they marked a straight Republican ticket, but when checking their votes, discovered that Clinton/Kaine was marked. This has been reported by InfoWars and picked up by various other right-wing pseudo-news sources.
Of course, this has been repeated by my right-wing friends on social media. They are aghast that such fraud must be perpetrated. Surely this scandal must go all the way to Hillary Clinton herself! The InfoWars even says that the Texas Director of Elections ran from reporters who tried to ask him about it. The fact that Texas does not even have a Director of Elections does not dissuade these people. The fact that elections in Texas are administered by the Secretary of State – a Republican – does not dissuade them. Hillary is trying to steal the election right here in Texas!! :eek:
My question: What is wrong with these people? These are normally intelligent, respectable people in the community. Odd as it is, I can get (sort of) that they see Trump as the Second Coming or that Clinton is a fulfillment of Revelation. But this? This is just stupid. This isn’t some conspiracy to change votes! This is a voter who mishandled the voting machine. It’s Occam’s Razor. For it to be fraud, many people (almost all of whom are Republicans) would have to agree to commit a felony, ----or ----, two twits mark their ballots wrong.
Making a machine that not only changes your vote but also DISPLAYS your changed vote would be the worst form of voter fraud ever. How on earth are you going to flip an election like that? Common sense would suggest either user error or a poorly calibrated touchscreen.
Wasn’t there a similar kerfuffle back in '08, when voting machines somewhere were allegedly changing Obama votes to McCain? I believe that one was caused by poorly calibrated touchscreens. I suspect this is a similar issue.
There was a video in 2012 of a machine that was changing Obama to Romney. According to the guy who made it, you had to touch a narrow sliver for it to record Obama (simply picking the next person down accurately recorded the vote for them). But he also said that the people in the adjacent booths said their machines worked fine so it looked to a be a one-off machine problem.
Technically, wouldn’t this be vote rigging, not voter fraud?
They had a bit on this on the local Houston news last night. They had an election official run through how it could accidentally happen by pressing a (slightly ambiguously titled iirc) button after you pressed the “straight ticket” button.
I’ll ignore the unproven details of the OP and say that there are irregularities in any election held on a large scale. Whether intentional or not, the misrepresentation of two votes doesn’t rig an election, and the reporting of such things has often turned out to be at least misleading and probably more often downright false.
I’ve often said before we need to return to paper and pencil two part ballots which can be checked for accuracy, not because voter fraud or election rigging is a tremendous problem in this country, but because we need faith in the electorate that the system is fair and not subject to manipulation. The use of machinery to count votes will always be suspect because of the potential for failure and abuse.
In addition to the two options you mentioned, Occam would suggest another: two voters who deliberately lied about either how they voted or about what was displayed afterward.
Two voters who would appear to have now generated a large story and much publicity for pseudo-news sites, and some additional cover for a certain someone’s plans to claim the election was rigged.
In Texas we have voting machines with BIG letters and BIG touchscreen squares where you can select candidates. You have the option of voting straight ticket Lib, Green, Dem, or Repub. You also review the your options before the “two-click” submission process. Most items come up on a different screen, excepting those times where there are few candidates (like some of the judgeships).
When you vote straight ticket, you are still lead through all screens, with your selection highlighted. I had 10 screens yesterday, every single one of them showing me that I selected the D, giving me the option to change my vote on each and every ballot. (So if I wanted to do straight D, but vote for my Lib buddy for Ombudsman, I can do that).
… You then have to review the selections, all 10 screens being displayed again, this time you have to click a “back” button to modify the selections.
… You then have to submit your ballot.
… You then have to confirm your submission.
Anybody who made a mistake in straight-ticket voting, at least in my section of Bexar County, had twenty-one different chances to see that they’ve made a mistake.
So I’m calling bullshit or old or stupid or any combination of the three.
Yeah, the best fraud simply be a machine that displays whatever option the voter selected, but deep down within the inner workings of the machine (which no voter can see,) the machine is pre-rigged to flip votes to Trump or Hillary.
Of course, the machine couldn’t register 100% Trump or 100% Hillary; that would instantly scream ‘rigged,’ so it would make only minor “improvements” to the vote; maybe boosting Hillary or Trump by 10-20% more than the machine would have registered if it were an honest device.
I get that - there are poll workers willing to help, of course. But for those who wonder what it takes to do a straight-ticket vote in TX, there it is:
You make the selection to vote straight party
You get to change your selection on a ballot-by-ballot basis
You have to review your selections ballot-by-ballot
You submit
You confirm submission
All except one of the complaints came after the person left the polling place, so who knows?
The above article makes a good point: By pressing Single party in step one, then by pressing on the candidate during step # 2, you deselect that vote.
There is no fool-proof system. The people who count the votes determine the selection. Paper ballots were used in Florida in 2000. Its easy to “lose” a bunch of ballots from districts that lean one way or the other. Computers can be hacked. You can always doubt any election if you want.
The Trumpeters on reddit were howling voter fraud over about a hundred voter guides found in a dumpster in Alameda, CA. Voter guides, not ballots, in a reliably Democratic place. Compared to that, a few faulty touchscreens in Texas is downright evidence.
I’d like a paper trail, at least, for computer voting systems. so far, though, the case for a rigged election is about as convincing as an idiot claiming alien spaceships are visiting by showing off a piece of rusty scrap metal.