Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the inconceivable! dept.

Mystery of missing votes deepens as Congress investigates Georgia:

To find a clue about what might have gone wrong with Georgia's election last fall, look no further than voting machine No. 3 at the Winterville Train Depot outside Athens.

On machine No. 3, Republicans won every race. On each of the other six machines in that precinct, Democrats won every race.The odds of an anomaly that large are less than 1 in 1 million, according to a statistician's analysis in court documents. The strange results would disappear if votes for Democratic and Republican candidates were flipped on machine No. 3.

It just so happens that this occurred in Republican Brian Kemp's home precinct, where he initially had a problem voting when his yellow voter access card didn't work because a poll worker forgot to activate it. At the time, Kemp was secretary of state — Georgia's top election official — and running for governor in a tight contest with Democrat Stacey Abrams.

The suspicious results in Winterville are evidence in the ongoing mystery of whether errors with voting machines contributed to a stark drop-off in votes recorded in the race for Georgia lieutenant governor between Republican Geoff Duncan, who ended up winning, and Democrat Sarah Riggs Amico.

Even though it was the second race on the ballot, fewer votes were counted for lieutenant governor than for labor commissioner, insurance commissioner and every other statewide contest lower on the ballot. Roughly 80,000 fewer votes were counted for lieutenant governor than in other down-ballot elections.

The potential voting irregularities were included among 15,500 pages of documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that have also been turned over to the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is looking into Georgia's elections. The documents, provided under the Georgia Open Records Act, offer details of alleged voting irregularities but no answers.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office has refused to open an investigation. State election officials say the low number of votes could have been caused by low interest in the lieutenant governor's race or where that contest appeared on the ballot.

'It is not letting me vote for who I want': Video shows electronic machine changing ballot in Mississippi (Paywalled and/or Javascript required):

Over and over again, the man touches a box on an electronic voting machine to cast his ballot for Mississippi gubernatorial candidate Bill Waller Jr. And over and over again, the machine instead checks off a vote for Waller's opponent in Tuesday's GOP runoff, Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves.

"How would that happen?" a woman exclaims in the background.

"It is not letting me vote for who I want to vote for," the man says.

The moment, captured on a video uploaded to Facebook and Twitter, where it's gotten nearly 750,000 views as of early Wednesday, shows one of at least three malfunctioning voting machines reported in two counties in Mississippi, state elections officials confirmed.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:16PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:16PM (#887495)

    FTFY...
    You see?!? THIS is why we MUST have Voter IQ!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:28PM (#887502)

    Don't hold your breath.

  • (Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:38PM (4 children)

    by cmdrklarg (5048) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:38PM (#887505)

    The same bunch that advocates Voter ID laws are the same bunch that want no Voter IQ either.

    --
    The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:30PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:30PM (#887534)

      I really feel you - god, it hurts when someone stupid votes for something or someone dangerous or anti-social.

      Unfortunately, a 'qualifier' test for voters would be incompatible with democracy. Tests have cultural biases, and in the US a racially divided school system has literally made white kids better at taking tests, as a skill.

      I'm sure you've met some kid who got through university by gaming the system, being good enough at test writing but with no real learning of the material at hand. I don't want them to get to vote, while an illiterate but politically active person would not.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:11AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:11AM (#887633)

        "a racially divided school system has literally made white kids better at taking tests, as a skill"
        Bullshit. If they actually stayed in school and studied they'd have the same chance as white kids, but no... they gang bang and/or hope to be a (c)rap star so they won't have to work.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:54AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:54AM (#887657)

          If they actually stayed in school and studied they'd have the same chance as white kids

          Stay in school to do what? Rote memorize information and spew it all back on tests and assignments? A trained monkey could almost do that, since understanding the material is not a requirement. People who don't even have a surface-level understanding of any of the material they studied are allowed to graduate en masse.

          When our schooling system (as opposed to an education system) is such a disaster, it's hard for me to care about people dropping out.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:50AM (#887654)

        I'm sure you've met some kid who got through university by gaming the system, being good enough at test writing but with no real learning of the material at hand.

        There are massive amounts of those people, since that's almost all our schooling system cares about. The important thing is that the tests are cheap and easy to grade.