Redstate

When Swann and Santorum win, I don't want allegations of fraud or abuse. Where is the source here? Is it coming to you directly from the ground?

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/politics/15950582.htm

The Governor of PA: Democrat
The Chief Elections Officer of PA: Democrat
Philly is a wholly-owned subsidiary of which party: Democrat

Yep - clearly a case of rampant voter disenfranchisement by Republicans

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

The "Paper-Trail" of your vote is a little receipt with a code on it. There is no printout of how you actually vote. As I was explaining to the poll-worker today, I have no way to know how I actually voted today.
So hang onto those receipts, folks. When the recounts happen, you'll probably need to verify that your code matches your votes...

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Dana
Common Sense Political Thought

...the four now-most dreaded words in the English language.

--furious

"I find your lack of faith disturbing." -- Darth Vader

I just voted in my very rural PA town, had no issues at all.

Could you provide your sources for such news? I'm seeing none of this (or the earlier post about major issues in certain Philly precincts...) from any news outlet, either nationally or locally.

I'm particularly skeptical about this report in particular - how does one tell if a particular individual vote was recorded incorrectly while the polls are still open? The machines (at least the ones they have in my area) have to be unlocked to read the tallys and that doesn't happen until after the polls close...

I've heard a few reports of nationwide issues (not just PA) with some percentage of machines crashing, or not being able to be set up properly. But nothing so far indicating any serious widespread problems in PA in particular.

. . . is our insistance on being able to know the results now! If we weren't so concerned with knowing, at 9:00 PM tonight, who won, we might have different systems.

My preference would be for a machine which produces a clearly marked, machine-readible paper ballot, one which was also readible to the naked eye. Then you let optical scanners do the quick count, and have easily verifiable paper records in the event a manual recount is required, along with strong standards for interpretation of any non-standard markings on the ballots. (My preference would be that any man-made markings on the ballots other than a write-in vote would invalidate the ballot, period.)

Of course, if we held to the wisdom of the founding fathers, and restricted the franchise to white male property owners, things would be much better! :)

Dana
Common Sense Political Thought

I used a Diebold machine in Illinois that printed all my votes in English on a paper tape roll inside the machine for an audit trail. I could verify my vote was properly recorded before pushing the DONE button. I didn't notice any identifier that could connect my vote to me, but I'm not paranoid and didn't look closely. The touch screen was easy to use, even for writing in Randy Stufflebeam for Gov.

FWIW, a printed receipt creates more problems than it solves. Anyone capable of hacking a voting machine can figure out how to print out one answer and tally another internally. I could not agree more that it would also set the stage for intimidation based on a loss of privacy. It's too easy to imagine groups of thugs demanding to see proof of how someone voted, to say nothing of abusive husbands/wives/bosses etc.

Point is, when you go into that ballot booth nobody knows who you voted for but you. I think that's the way the founders intended it, and anything that jeopardizes that is a cure that may be worse than the disease. It doesn't take electronic machines to produce massive fraud -- just look at Acorn, cheating the old fashioned way.

(waves to Brandozilla in passing re: rural PA :-) )

Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania here!

New machines for today's vote, easy to use, though they offer less privacy than the old booths. Large type makes them very easy to read, and yes, I used the straight Republican Party line option. Unfortunately, I'll probably be 0-4 in my selections, unless Rick Santorum pulls an amazing comeback. My Democratic congressman and Democratic state representative had only token opposition, and my Democratic state senator didn't even have that! :(

Dana
Common Sense Political Thought