Video of election machine voter fraud?

Video has finally become available showing a voting machine picking a Democrat when a voter presses the touchscreen for a Republican.

Having been an election judge in Maryland, up until now I have been generally skeptical of this story that has been making the rounds in the past week. It is notoriously easy to accidently press the wrong button on a touchscreen, so hearing that people pressed Republican and got Democrat did not impress me. The story could easily be an example of Republican partisans trying to drum up outrage against Democrats, something I abhor, from either party. I wanted to see actual video.

Well, we’ve got some video now, which I’ve posted below the fold. As the article notes,

The YouTube footage is the first visual report of the alleged problem with the voting machines. The error appears to occur when the voter’s finger is slightly off center in the Republican box, which appears below the Democrat box. It is apparently still possible to vote for the Republican candidate, and it is possible for a vigilant voter to correct the mistake and vote again, but a voter in a hurry might easily register a mistaken vote for the Democrat by mistake and fail to notice. The problem seems to recur throughout the ticket of races. (No test involving a voter trying to choose the Democratic candidate and selecting the Republican instead is shown.)

The footage is still not conclusive, as there are many ways the action could be made to appear worse than it really is, and there is no real proof that this video is of an actual voting machine, in a voting booth.

If true, however, it suggests real voter fraud, as there is no way the machine could have accidently been programmed to misread a finger touch like this. Someone would have had to intentionally calibrated the machine to do this.

» Read more