Battleground Florida: Key to Understanding Both the Problem and the Implications: Florida represents a milestone in understanding the means and magnitude of ES&S touchscreen failures. This is due to the comprehensive studies conducted on the statewide failure of Florida's ES&S touchscreens, as well as the Government Accountability Office's investigation into Sarasota's Congressional District 13 election. So even though Florida replaced its ES&S touchscreens with E&S scanners as the primary method of voting, Florida is key to understanding both the touchscreen problems and the overwhelming implications.
If you're a Democrat voting in Florida, a cursory glance at ballots past shows a definite pattern of Red votes gobbling up Blue votes, as the calibration drift causes candidates at the top of the ballot hierarchy to snuff out the challengers below. McCain takes the Obama vote. Now sitting Governor Charlie Crist gets the D-Jim Davis vote. R-Buchanan gets the D-Jennings vote. R-McCollum gets the D-Campbell vote. Attorney Janet Reno loses to the relatively unknown Bill McBride in the primaries. As a result Jeb Bush goes on to take his second term. And so on.
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Oh yes, and in 2004's Presidential? "I clicked John Kerry but the computer kept asking me to verify George Bush." Florida and five other states, reported their votes changing from Kerry to Bush. (MSNBC) Remembering the battleground in 2004, a win in either Florida or Ohio provided the candidates with a win to the presidency. ([2004 vs. 2000 Electoral Map)
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When exit polls showed John Kerry with a three percent lead in these key battle ground states, and when NBC's Tom Brokaw proclaimed Kerry the winner, did both get it right?
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In Ohio, while George W. Bush's official margin of victory was just 118,775, U.S. House Judiciary Committee received "more than 57,000 complaints" following Bush's re-election. Powerful Government Accountability Office Report Confirms Key 2004 Election Problem Findings by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman and GAO Report Ohio
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In Florida, Kerry did win after all. At least in the morning. But by afternoon, the machines heated up, "melting" his win away. Had candidate "Alicia Aardvark" claimed a place at the top of the ballot, an extra 25% bump might not have gleaned enough votes for her to win. But in a close contest, it's more than enough to bump a loser over the top. Over 5000 incidents were documented in Florida alone by VoteProtect.org. Miami-Dade and Broward Counties each recorded over one thousand election incidents. (VoteProtect.org)
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In summary, we can't know how many votes might have been lost had there been no warning from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University in 2008. Just as we can't know how many votes actually were lost and flipped in previous elections. But we do know ES&S rakes in our dollars to count our votes, then they squander out votes away. We do know unequivocally, ES&S is not working for America.
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Meanwhile, the folks at Diebold recently purchased by ES&S "Quietly Patches Security Flaw in Vote Counting Software," Kim Zetter, Wired.com's Threat Level Blog, August 2009.
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