It says:
On February 27, an unidentified problem with the Diebold Company’s equipment prevented the election scanning machine from printing the election tape. Because of this and to reassure the public that the vote count was accurate, Lafayette’s City Clerk called for a recount. This recount was performed on March 8 and March 9 and the results are as follows:
- Number of Precincts - 1
- Precincts Reporting - 1 (100%)
- Times Counted - 6,426
- Total Votes - 6,424
- Times Over Voted - 0
- Number Of Under Votes - 2
Yes - 3,512 (54.67%)
No - 2,912 (45.33%)
3 comments:
No change. No surprise.
What will happen next? An election fraud conspiracy charge? Or a third ethics probe?
A comment on the Lafayette News article on the recount with the woman who moved from her home on West Cleveland six years ago but never updated her voter registration information and continued to vote at her former precinct.
Isn't giving false information to an election worker about where you live illegal? I think it is. So is signing someone else's name to a ballot and voting. It sounds like a ballot might have been sent to the West Cleveland address because the woman who used to live there voted in her former precinct and claimed it was still her legal address last November.
The best explanation of all of the irregulaties during the counting was in the Lafayette News this week. Note the problem was initially observed by Quentin Young, the LN reporter.
One major hole in the process is that the poll watchers or the city clerk do not have computer expertise. So they did not quite figure out what was going on until the end. When the details came out, it was quite clear that Diebold had violated the security of the count several times. That's why the city clerk made the decision to perform the recount.
With mail-in ballots, fraud can also occur before the ballot gets to the counting room. LN reported just one of the possible problems.
I agree! Perhaps we should go back to the good old days of poll taxes and literacy tests. That sure prevented corruption and stuffed ballot boxes!
The system is certainly not perfect, and in cases where elections are fairly close further efforts should be considered. However in this case appropriate action was immediately taken and the margin large enough that even a thousand mis-counted ballots would not have made a difference. Time to move on.
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