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Issues concerning the integrity of the election machines and software coding have been raised since electronic voting machines were first used. Several experiments have been conducted that show that compromising election machines and their results is not difficult to do. In the 2004 election, there were many reports of election machines where you could not vote for John Kerry or other Democratic candidates. If you selected John Kerry's name, the machine displayed that you had chosen Bush or a third party candidate. We have started to see this in early voting in 2008 as this http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200810170676 article from West Virginia's Charleston Gazette shows:
Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates. "When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna. When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."
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.On her third try, Matheney managed to cast votes for both Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman, Democratic candidates for the two open seats.
Calvin Thomas, 81, who retired from Kaiser Aluminum in Ravenswood in 1983 and now lives in Ripley, experienced the same problem. "When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again. "The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.
"When I hollered about that, the girl who worked there said, 'Push it again.' I pushed Obama again and it stayed there. Then, the machine did the same thing for other candidates.
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When you do the research on reports like these over the past six to eight years, you almost never see instances of this where choices for Republican candidates are changed to Democratic or third party candidates. Again, these reports are verified issues with the machines where local poll workers verified that the voter was pushing the buttons indicating choices for Democrats and the voters’ choice was altered by the machine.
What if you encounter problems on Election Day?
What should voters do who are presented with challenges on Election day? Whether you are informed that you have been purged or had your registration questioned, or you have problems with an election machine or any other issue, there are some steps you should take. First, have the phone number for the local Obama campaign office on hand and call immediately. Second, have the phone number for your top local newspaper and local CBS or NBC television station handy and call them to let them know what has happened. Third, if despite your best efforts you will not be able to cast a regular ballot, insist on a provisional ballot. Fourth, take down all of the names of the poll workers involved and ask them how you will know whether your provisional ballot will be counted.
What Republicans do not want the American public to know is that they are conducting a coordinated, widespread and very sophisticated election fraud effort to try to ensure that Republican Party candidates win regardless of the will of the voters. The cornerstone of this effort is voter disenfranchisement. Using the voter fraud red herring, Republicans are using every possible loophole to invalidate the voting rights and registration of people in Democratic leaning areas or new voters (who tend overwhelmingly to be Democrats). Beyond coordinated disenfranchisement, there are a myriad of other schemes being run by the GOP in various states including, apparently, altering the way electronic voting machines record votes. The Republican Party is hoping that focusing the American people on non-existing voter fraud issues will hide what the GOP is doing regarding election fraud. Don't be fooled by the disinformation efforts.
