At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.

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."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.

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.

"Why didn't she [the polling clerk] tell me before I even used the machine that might happen? And how many people, especially my age, didn't notice that?

The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports - News - Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes*

Putting aside the conspiracy theories, there are a number of reasons why "electronic voting" has a lot of problems.

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"As in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing, when their credit ran out, the game stopped."
--Marriner S. Eccles, FDR's fed Chairman. (1951)

Oh gosh touch screens?! That would be a disaster in my town where most of us are elderly or getting that way!
But it looks like the people who take care of the machines would have them running spiffy. I mean they are new right?
Sometimes video games that are touch screen (in arcades) get a film of grease after awhile from so many users. But that usually takes awhile.
I have a feeling this election is going to be a fiasco.

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I wouldn't mind a touch screen if it also comes with a printed receipt of your votes...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

Our fearless leaders are too dumb to think of that.

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Vote by Mail, people. It's the best, cheapest and most reliable method we have. Let's enfranchise as many people as possible, let's make the voting process as accessible as possible, let's save millions of dollars in costs, let's work towards taking exit polls out of the election equation. VBM uses highly reliable optical readers so there's none of this touch screen crap to deal with. VBM is based on a paper copy of your vote. It's all around a vastly better way to vote. So every time you see something like this, write your local election officials and ask them why your state doesn't use VBM. All it takes is one motivated county clerk to change things.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

God is a conservative -

Ecclesiastes 10:2--"A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left."

I'll drink to that!

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Frugal tip: To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.

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There is actually a great reason NOT to EVER give printed vote receipts.



If one wanted to "buy the votes" of any electorate all one would have to do is collect those receipts and pay off.

Didn't you notice it was only democrats that "liked" this idea.

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"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count."Robert Heinlein

Never ever has there ever been ANY fraud committed through the mail.

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"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count."Robert Heinlein

I think perhaps we need to send a few thousand bottles of "purple ink" to OHIO.......Isn't it grand to be a "third world country".

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"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count."Robert Heinlein

I was terribly amused when after watching those West Palm Beach morons looking at chads with magnifying glasses that someone thought that if we just put the data on a computer chip we would be able to "prove it" (what an electron microscope?). There has been no better system designed to be an absolute record than the simple "optical scan" systems where you darken a large area to show your vote. Readable by human and machine thus verifiable.
Once you have the "foolproof counting system" it then become necessary to have a "FRAUD proof" registration system which is where the democrats have attacked us (and by us I don't mean republicans I mean the entire integrity of our liberty and our country)this year.

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"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count."Robert Heinlein