‘Calibration error’ changes GOP votes to Dem in Illinois county

Calling BS on this:

‘Calibration error’ changes GOP votes to Dem in Illinois county

The conservative website Illinois Review reported that “While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race.

The eventual excuse from Cook County Board of Elections Deputy Communications Director Jim Scalzitti is that the touch screen was out of calibration.

One of my businesses from the 1990's was touch-screen kiosks for various uses… so I know a bit about this. That's complete BS. If it was out of calibration, the entire screen would be off, and even the touch area to "vote now" would be off, and he could never even get started with casting votes.

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord
Calling BS on this:

‘Calibration error’ changes GOP votes to Dem in Illinois county

The conservative website Illinois Review reported that “While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race.

The eventual excuse from Cook County Board of Elections Deputy Communications Director Jim Scalzitti is that the touch screen was out of calibration.

One of my businesses from the 1990's was touch-screen kiosks for various uses… so I know a bit about this. That's complete BS. If it was out of calibration, the entire screen would be off, and even the touch area to "vote now" would be off, and he could never even get started with casting votes.

Ah ha ha ha! LOL!! Calibration error? Thats a good one!! Yeah voting is on the level! Don't participate in the BS!

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I hate to disagree but I've also had quite a lot of past experience with touchscreens — though much of mine has been with handheld data terminals. It really would depend on how the voting screens were laid out but if it were say a 4 column layout:

Office Dem Candidate Rep Candidate Ind Candidate

and the calibration was off on the X axis, it's quite plausible. In this particular scenario, touching the hit area for the Republican candidate could register as clicking on the Democrat and clicking the Independent candidate would register for the Republican.

These stories have cropped up every election since the advent of electronic voting kiosks. In fact, there's a term for it — "vote flipping." As I pointed out in an earlier thread, the instances of "vote flipping" have more or less equally affected both major parties. Here's an article in Slate about Obama votes registering for Romney in 2012.

Real vote tampering schemes would be far less obvious as all of these voting kiosks have conspicuous indicators to tell the voter which candidate has been selected. I'd imagine a real attempt at tampering would involve something like changing the vote that is written to the card which is something that would be totally invisible to the voter and therefore unlikely to be caught.

EDIT:

Here's a few articles from recent elections:

About That "Flipping" Vote -- What You Should Know (2008)
Are design issues to blame for vote 'flipping' in touch-screen machines? (2008)
Early e-voting results in vote flipping in three states so far (2008)
NORTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN PARTY SUES OVER VOTE-FLIPPING (2010)
Rigged Elections for Romney? Vote Flipping (2012)
Rigged Elections for Romney? (2012)
Voting-machine glitches: How bad was it on Election Day around the country? (2012)

Some expert opinions:

Vote Flipping and Touchscreens(2008)
An Expert Weighs in on That Viral Reddit 'Voter Fraud' Video (2012)

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

This isn't the first time I've heard of rigged electronic voting machines and it's sickening to say the least!

IMO, this is the type of voter fraud that is becoming ever more prevalent and that we should be working non-stop to eliminate. It doesn't make a rat's ass how perfectly your ID matches your voter registration certificate if the machine is going to manipulate your vote, now does it?

This is the real voter fraud currently taking place and all these new voter initiatives requiring IDs and the like to supposedly combat in-person voter fraud are nothing more than a distraction intended to keep us looking the other way.

This is voter fraud on a mass scale. The type that has the potential to totally change the outcome of political elections and whether deliberate or not, I think this is one area where technology has failed us. If anything, the introduction of electronic voting has done little more than open the door for a whole new type of election manipulation.

Maybe it time we consider going back to paper ballots and pencils. You know what they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

Hell, at this point I think they probably have more honest elections in Iraq where they use paper ballots and finger dye, the we do here in the U.S.. Just saying.

F&S for the OP.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

The government has been all about reducing paper usage over the last few years. I suppose there are some things that would help reduce paper use that are helpful. Standard government forms, etc.

There are some things that should not be done electronically. That includes voting, counting the votes, and presenting the final results. Where is the petition to end electronic voting on Change.org? For the voting purposes it might use a lot of paper and ink and people's time, but I think it is still well worth it.

And there, in a nutshell, is why electronic voting machines should not be allowed

originally posted by: N3k9Ni
And there, in a nutshell, is why electronic voting machines should not be allowed

Do you trust humans to count them?

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Of course! How do you think Obama got re-elected in 2012? It was a fraud set-up they'd been working on for years!

~ Super-Dem contributor, George Soros, bought voting machine company, SCYTL, from Spain. (Michelle Obama also took a long and luxurious vacation to Spain around this time; unknown if there is/was a connection.) Obama then threw vote tabulation duties to SCYTL:

politicalvelcraft.org...
(Aug. 2012) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FRAUD IN MOTION: OBAMA SENDS "VOTING SERVICES" TO GEORGE SOROS' COMPANY IN SPAIN

~ The biggest vote-tabulation machine company in the U.S. is Dominion, in Denver, Colorado:

www.dominionvoting.com...
DOMINION VOTING

Less well known - Some of Obama's Re-election Campaign Chief Techies were born and raised in Denver, and still have family there. Want proof that something fishy was also going on with Dominion? Colorado was listed as a "swing-state" up to voting day, with no one able to determine if it would go GOP or Dem. It went Democratic. Surprise!

~ By late October 2012, Romney and his VP were speaking to standing-room-only, enthusiastic crowds everywhere. While Obama and Biden (after making a total mess of the televised debates) were speaking to ... dozens in mostly-empty arenas.

~ Day before the Election, Obama went to Chicago to visit his Re-election Headquarters. He emerged to announce to the press that "We are going to win - the votes are there." (Chicago has a LONG history of corruption, fraud and graft in their elections.)

Q: Do you really think bin Laden is dead?
A: Must be. He's already on the voter rolls in Chicago.

~ ELECTION DAY 2012: Polls everywhere were reporting "record crowds wrapped around the block". These polls also reported that the voting was "trending 55% GOP all day."

~ Then ... THUD! Obama/Biden won??? But the next day, their pocket-media (Associated Press) had an "explanatory" Press Release all ready to go: "Millions fewer had voted in 2012 than 2008". (Huh? That made NO sense, and was totally contrary to what polls across the country experienced on Voting Day!)

Forget the media stories about idiots voting more than once, or how most of Philadelphia's precincts went 100% for Obama. (Not one vote for Romney. Darned amazing, huh?) The 2012 election was all about massive stolen-votes and vote-fraud-by-machine that was unbelievable in its scope. I'd hoped the Feds had gotten on top of all this after 2012. But ... apparently not.

a reply to: N3k9Ni

I agree and I'm glad my district still uses paper ballots. Filling in a circle is idiot/tamper proof!

the reliance on digital storage only, for anything important should be against the law...take it from an old (80's and 90's) computer guy...it is absolutely necessary to have a paper trail. and for those that use cloud computing, you do realize that your digital data storage is controlled by others, and can be "accidentally" lost, deleted, hidden, copied, etc...

originally posted by: KawRider9
a reply to: N3k9Ni

I agree and I'm glad my district still uses paper ballots. Filling in a circle is idiot/tamper proof!

what's that old saying...to paraphrase, I don't care how you vote, I care about those that do the counting.

a reply to: Hoosierdaddy71

I certainly don't trust chimps to count them. Of course humans would have to count them but paper ballots can be more readily recounted and verified. With a paper ballot there's little to no chance at a person would inadvertently vote for the wrong candidate. With electronic voting, as in this case, machines can be manipulated to fraudulently cast votes for a particular candidate.

double post

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

There is no excuse for this. I don't know if it was a calibration error or not, but it was only one machine, it was taken out of service and Jim Moynihan was able to vote on another machine. People leave that out. Much less sensational...

Scalzitti stressed that at no time were Moynihan’s votes actually registered, and that voters are always asked to make sure the votes they cast are correct before they are counted. Scalzitti praised Moynihan for checking his ballot and alerting the election judge of the machine’s failure.

Source

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

"Calibration error" you say? I guess that depends on who is calibrating the equipment.

a reply to: N3k9Ni

Humans program the machines.
humans can make paper ballots disappear.
Kinda reminds me of the Florida paper recount. I would say that there are a lot of people that think that one was rigged.

I think the increasing push for ballots by mail is also pretty damn concerning. Lets go back to hanging chads and add in voter ID to boot.

originally posted by: jimmyx

originally posted by: KawRider9
a reply to: N3k9Ni

I agree and I'm glad my district still uses paper ballots. Filling in a circle is idiot/tamper proof!

what's that old saying...to paraphrase, I don't care how you vote, I care about those that do the counting.

'It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes.'
-Joseph Stalin

a reply to: Flatfish

Voter fraud: same person voting more than once, dead people voting

Election fraud: rigged machines, intentionally lost ballots

For some reason the GOP seems to lump them all together. The majority of instances where something was amiss that caused elections to swing to the wrong candidate were due to election fraud, not voter fraud. The entire argument the GOP makes for Voter ID is pretty weak if you delve into the details. It may not be about discriminating against minorities and the poor, but after looking into the issue and seeing that voter fraud plays such a small role -- one has to wonder.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Check with Obama, he says voter ID laws are a non-issue.
[url=http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/221446-obama-apathy-not-voter-id-keeps-minorities-from-polls]
If it isn't an issue, why all the lawsuits claiming it is?