Everyone who cares about American democracy should be concerned about the
election 2005 story told by Brad Friedman in the Huffington Post yesterday. Brad Friedman, one of the world's best
bloggers, has done an admirable job writing over the past year about problems and potential problems with the Diebold electronic voting machines being introduced in many districts around the country.
In this story he writes about the very curious (some -- like Brad -- might say impossible) discrepancy between pre-election polls and voter tallies on four Ohio ballot propositions. Perhaps the gun isn't smoking, but it's definitely warm to the touch and deserves to be examined more closely.
As one of the conspiracy theorists who found the exit poll vs. voter tally results in the 2004 presidential election troubling, I am even more disturbed by these enormous discrepancies in Ohio. Comments on Brad's blog have recommended examining results county by county (about half of Ohio's counties used Diebold machines this year). I would heartily agree that every possible clue be pursued here.
These machines have been shown to be easily corrupted, anjd have been disallowed in California for this reason. Officers of Diebold promised in 2004 to deliver the election to Bush -- and may have done so.
It would be very simple for electronic voting machines to include a paper trail (it happens at the grocery store every day, where electronic cash registers produce receipts). Diebold's resistance to including such a feature in its machines is suspect on the surface.
Many thanks to Brad Friedman for doing his part to keep a close eye on what is happening.
