(APN) ATLANTA -"You've got electronic voting machines. Many people called in and shared their concern. They pushed the button for Cynthia McKinney and Hank Johnson came up. It wasn't one time, it wasn't two times, it was many, many times," Karen Fitzpatrick, who has been monitoring elections for US Rep. McKinney's re-election campaign, told Atlanta Progressive News in an exclusive interview.
Let me repeat: The McKinney Campaign says they have documented complaints of voters here in Georgia whose votes FLIPPED BEFORE THEIR VERY EYES on Diebold machines.
"It started early this morning. There were well over 25 to 30 calls that came in [to the campaign office]. Many of them went to the poll manager [after this happened]. In some cases, the poll managers said there's nothing we can do. In some cases the voter left frustrated as if their vote had been compromised, as if it had been stolen," Fitzpatrick said.
And many voters hadn't even selected the "cast ballot" button yet, when they were told it was already too late, Fitzpatrick said.
"I believe that was their instructions. There's no question in my mind they were following instructions," from the Elections Division under Cathy Cox, she said.
"The zero results report didn't come up zero on many precincts today. Whenever it doesn't come out a zero, that means votes didn't get counted," Fitzpatrick said.
McKinney's campaign showed APN a stack of affidavits from who they say are traumatized voters. APN hopes to interview some of these voters very soon and bring you the details.
Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan and Medea Benjamin talked exclusively with APN. The renowned activists both flew into Atlanta especially for the McKinney campaign's primary celebration. Sheehan told APN she hasn't ruled out running for Congress in the future in California.
But the celebration ended up only partially a celebration in fact. McKinney had the majority of the vote, but not enough to avoid a runoff race against Mr. Hank Johnson.
"I don't believe the results," Fitzpatrick said, adding she expected to see problems with electronic voting and other aspects of the elections process, but didn't expect McKinney would end up in a runoff race.
But back to the vote switching. More on Sheehan and Benjamin and their hunger strike and the McKinney celebration in a moment.
"With automated voting, you're entrusting what you put on a ballot will be encoded [properly]," Fitzpatrick said.
The many programming insecurities in electronic voting have been covered extensively previously, including an extensive study recently by the Brennan Center.
"It doesn't take much to say, Every tenth voter, I want you to do this with Cynthia's vote," Fitzpatrick said.
McKinney's campaign has reported a volume of elections irregularities. "We had so many failures," she said. There are situations where people got the wrong party ballot, of Democrats who received Republican ballots.
Matthew Cardinale is Editor of Atlanta Progressive News. He has written previously for the Sun-Sentinel Newspaper, Shelterforce Magazine, The Advocate Magazine, The San Francisco Bay View, and the Berkeley Daily Planet Newspaper. He has also written for numerous online publications including OpEdNews, BuzzFlash, CommonDreams, AlterNet, RawStory, and TruthOut.
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