North Carolina May Redo State Election

goombah99 writes "The North Carolina Observer reports that due to failure of computerized voting system to properly record votes after its memory cards filled North Carolina may have to redo the November 2 statewide election. They believe 4400 votes were lost and from this have decided that only the State Ag commissioner race must be re-run. Still it's going to cost them a lot, indeed its going to cost them about the same price as 1000 new voting machines (3 million dollars) , or about $750 for every lost vote. Guess they wont be able to afford a paper trail system now."

Comments

After RT "rest of the" FA...

[the_skywise]

So the article says "The counter hit 3,016 before the warning message came up. It went on and off, as Sanderson worked the control panel to accept more votes" Okay, so you had stupid user error:

"But county elections workers said the message was hard to see. Sanderson said a precinct worker could easily miss it while setting the machines.

L.E. Pond, chairman of the local elections board, was ready with pages copied from the UniLect instruction manual. The warning appears mixed in with other commands, he said, with no explanation of what to do if it pops up."

Oh man... so it came up with an "Out of memory error" but the manual didn't say what to do. So it's "not their fault. It sounds like you could set the software to more votes (say like 5000) and it would accept them, but keep putting up an error box saying that it couldn't save them and did this for EVERY vote and was ignored...

3 million sure would help OVC

[goombah99]

Apparently the state is willing to cough up an unnesseccary 3 miilion now and then. Shame they did not just give it to the Open Voting Consortium. The OVC systems are open source and have paper trails. They even cost less to buy let alone the cost of redoing an election.

OVC needs the support too (cash and serious programmers). Visit their web page .

Media forbidden from reporting on this

[revscat]

NOTE: The following is word-of-mouth, and its trustworthiness should be taken into account thereby.

On Friday I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS - I've known her for years and she is a Producer for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to be no no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse - far scarier. She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified - every one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity as what she considers to be a gov't watchdog requires her to speak out, while be it covert and she therefore asked me to "spread" the word...She said that journalism and the truth is at stake. She said another friend of hers, a producer at MSNBC, said that an anchor by the name of Keith Olbermann had brought it up on his show on Friday eve and the axe came down. He's atleast fighting back and talking about it on his "Blog", but she said that people there are worried that he's going to be fired by higher ups. She said at this point the only way that the "real news" was going to be if the people started talking about it and made a big enough stink about it to our elected officials, the FEC, and "noise" to the international media, that our own media won't have any choice but to cover it. (Yes, this is really happening in the good ole' supposed "democratic" free press of the US of A). The only place you'll see this talked about right now is on the internet and on AirAmericaRadio. Everyone - this is serious....I can't emphasize it any more than saying if there was ever a time to speak up and take action it is NOW. If you are concerned about the future of our country and feel helpless, here's your opportunity to take action. Imagine if you saw a loved one drowning - what do you do? Well, our country's democracy is drowning and she needs us.

Please, find 20-30 minutes today to call and/or email the following list of people and agencies and tell them that you are outraged and concerned about the possibility of election fraud and votes not having been counted properly in your state and others that may have altered the outcome of the election. Mention that you are aware of reports from counties around the country (in particular OH and Florida) that reported the following a) More votes recorded than there are voters in counties using electronic voting machines b) that not all military, provisional and absentee ballots have been counted. Let them know you consider this to be serious violations of your rights as a citizen under the "HAVA - Help America Vote Act" and that you want them to undertake an investigation.

People and Agencies to Contact regarding this matter:

1) Your two Senators & elected Representative - here is the main switchboard number for the House and Senate:
202-224-3121

2) Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader:
202-225-4965

3) These members are allegedl/reportedly looking into the issue - urge them to introduce a bill to investigate voter fraud:
Rep. Henry Waxman of CA - 202-225-3976
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of OH - 202-225-7032
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of OH - 202-225-5871
Rep. Tim Ryan of OH - 202-225-5261

4) Democratic & Republican Members of the House Judiciary Committee:
Rep. Robert Wexler of FL - 202-225-3001
Rep. Maxine Waters of CA - 202-225-2201
Rep. Chabot of OH (R)- 202-225-2216
Rep. King of IA (R)- 202-225-4426

5) Democrat & Republican Members (call both) of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Sen. Patrick Leahy of VT - 202-224-4242
Sen. Ted Kennedy of MA - 202-224-4543
Sen. Joe Biden of DE - 202-224-5042
Sen