Faulty PA Electronic Touchscreen Voting Machines Votes for Anyone But Obama
/A central Pennsylvania voter reminded the country why plenty of people have so much paranoia about casting ballots on electronic voting machines. They break, while they're supposed to be delivering future-altering votes in national elections.
The voter, who was trying to cast his ballot with his wife today wrote that after having his vote switched to Mitt Romney when he intended to vote for President Obama he, "assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney."
He writes about the ordeal of trying to figure out how to fool the machine into letting him cast a ballot for Obama:
Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
The machine was eventually taken offline, and "recalibrated," and returned to service, Mother Jones reported.
But there are reports that the faulty machinery is taking an agnostic approach to whose votes it wants to mess up. Last week a voter in Marion County, Ohio tried to vote for Mitt Romney on an electronic touchscreen machine, but her vote was automatically switched to a vote for President Obama, The Marion Star reported.
