Vote early, vote often-but above all, vote carefully

20.10.2008
It seems touch-screen voting machines in West Virginia have minds of their own. According to The Charleston Gazette, early voters in Putnam and Jackson Counties are reporting that .

Like 81-year-old Calvin Thomas, who says:

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again....The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican."

So far, there are no reports of votes flipping in the other direction (though that doesn't mean they didn't). Voting again seemed to . Of course, they caught the machines' errors; there's no way to know how many voters didn't notice when their votes went to "the other dude."

And of course, the good people of West Virginia are outraged. The governor has called a halt to early voting while the Federal Elections Commission investigates. Both major presidential candidates have expressed serious concern over the reliability of electronic voting.

Actually I just made that up. Nothing much appears to be happening at all. The around the nation are still in use, awaiting the nation's choice for president. For the mainstream media it's an old story that lacks sexy visuals and can't be boiled down to 22 words or less.