Diebold vote tally irregularities in the New Hampshire primary?! WHEEE!

[thewayne]

"Multiple indications of vote fraud are beginning to pop up regarding the New Hampshire primary elections. Roughly 80% of New Hampshire precincts use Diebold machines, while the remaining 20% are hand counted. A Black Box Voting contributor has compiled a chart of results from hand counted precincts vs. results from machine counted precincts. In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election. Another issue is the Republican results from Sutton precinct. The final results showed Ron Paul with 0 votes in Sutton. The next day a Ron Paul supporter came forward claiming that both she and several of her family members had voted for Ron Paul in Sutton. Black Box Voting reports that after being asked about the discrepancy Sutton officials decided that Ron Paul actually received 31 votes in Sutton, but they were left off of the tally sheet due to 'human error.'"

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/10/1635225

I think everyone in the country should have to go to Washington, D.C. to vote by dropping a pebble in a box for their candidate of choice. Can't be much worse than what we have right now.

Comments

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

Oh, we have more parties too, but the news media don't tend to cover them.

The reason we don't all vote on the same day for primaries goes back to a) the federal system, in which each state really does have some power to itself, including when it wants to vote, and b) the eighteenth century, in which it would be silly to have all the votes on the same day because there's no way the candidates could get around to campaign.

Each state also gets to pick the way the primaries are run; larger states such as mine have a pretty standard ballot (which means that propositions and other items of interest also get placed on the ballot), while states such as Iowa have caucuses, with people actually showing up and moving around in response to who they want to vote for.

The only way to smooth these differences out woud be to federalize the state voting process, and there are lots of reasons not to do that, beginning with the incredible outrage you'd have to overcome. The things that work for California would not work particularly well for Rhode Island, and vice versa.

Though I do admit that my county's voting system— fill in the bubble with ink, then scan the sucker into the secure box— has the dual virtues of quick tallies and a paper trail, so I don't understand why other places don't do it.

[zentraedi-shep.livejournal.com]

Okay, so this is essentially a piece of tradition, right? With modern media possibilities, there is no excuse like "well, I don't know who the candidates are since they did not come to my county".
People should let go of traditions that no longer work...

As for the federal aspects, Germany is a federal union as well, still we get to vote on ONE day for the federal votes. On another day we vote for individual state/county/communal votes...