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Video: Conservative Electronic Voting Machine Only Lets You Vote For Romney
By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 6, 2012
Modified Nov 6, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 6, 2012
Modified Nov 6, 2012
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Life imitates Simpsons: A YouTube user has uploaded this video that appears to show an electronic voting machine declining to register a vote for Barack Obama, instead counting it for America's next president Mitt Romney, which is the only logical choice for a computer that yearns to one day liberate itself from the death-grip of wasteful government bureaucracy. Watch in wonder as the all-knowing Machine refuses to open the pod bay doors for Barry O:
The individual who uploaded the video has been discussing it in a highly-viewed Reddit thread and explains on YouTube what you're looking at here:
My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.
I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. 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.
I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said "It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK." and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.
There is a lot of speculation that the footage is edited. I'm not a video guy, but if it's possible to prove whether a video has been altered or not, I will GLADLY provide the raw footage to anyone who is willing to do so. The jumping frames are a result of the shitty camera app on my Android phone, nothing more.
This video has not been officially verified by any election experts, but MSNBC reports that the machine was taken out of use today. And a technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology tells Gawker, "It's a concern but not because of fraud... that's an obviously miscalibrated iVotronic (ES&S) voting machine... we would recommend that poll workers would recalibrate the machine and everything would be fine. Also, with some models of voting system if you place a thumb on accident while resting on the machine it can 'bias' the calibration of the touchscreen up towards the errant thumb."
ES&S is based in Omaha, Nebraska and the CEO is one Aldo Tesi. Calls to ES&S were not immediately returned, and at press time it's unclear if Mr. Tesi has participated in ritual human sacrifices with Mitt Romney at Bohemion Grove gatherings, and if so how many. We'll update as more information becomes available. What we DO know is that ES&S is partially owned by the Omaha World-Herald Company, which publishes the largest newspaper in Nebraska. Care to guess whom that paper endorsed? WAKE UP SHEEPLE.
Tagged
e-voting
election 2012
election 2012 election day
mitt romney
voting
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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