Weird Ballot In Cambridge?
Note to readers: Please let me know what you’re seeing in the field today in Massachusetts.
A software engineer in Cambridge says he was handed a fishy ballot at the polling station in a local firehouse — it already had the bubble next to Scott Brown’s name filled in. But he doesn’t think it likely that it was fraud.
“Scott Brown’s bubble was already filled in,” the software engineer, Aaron Kemp, 28, tells me by phone. “I handed it back to them and asked, `Can I have a clean ballot, please?’”
The workers at the polling place in the Lexington Avenue Firehouse “were very surprised,” Kemp says, adding that he asked them to look through the other ballots to see if any others had a bubble filled in. “They looked through and they didn’t see any other ones,” he says.
Kemp says the area is very Democratic, and he worries that other voters might get a similar ballot without noticing, fill in Martha Coakley’s name, and submit a ballot with two names filled in, rendering it ineligible. But he says he thinks it was more likely a foul up than fraud. And, obviously, this is only one example.
Please let me know what you see on both sides along these lines.
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Update: A second voter — Julia Volynskaya, a 34-year-old social worker from Brighton — is now reporting the same experience.
“I was handed a ballot and when I went to fill it out I saw that the bubble next to Brown’s name was already filled in,” Volynskaya, who voted today in Brighton. Election workers, she added, promised her they “were going to look into how this happened.”
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“Here’s your ballot. We’ve filled it for you.”
Mistakes were made.
Palli:
“So what should have “broadcasting the results of the Florida 2000 election before the ballots are even counted” taught us?”
You weren’t quoting me, so your attempt at being cute kinda falls flat, doesn’t it?
But in regards Florida 2000, which count would you like? The count? The re-count? the Gore-selected counties’ recounts or the re-counts of the recounts?
Like the troglodyte NewsReference above, you’re not happy until you get your way…and even then you find reasons to inflict your whining on folks.
Such miserably unhappy people, liberal moonbats.
Nice try at deflection, Greg. Your leftist bias is blinding, and it’s clear that you are doing anything you can to deflect obvious Democrat Party voter fraud tactics onto an honest conservative.
The fact is that Scott Brown is head for at least a 15 point crushing of Martha Croakly, and his victory will lead a stampede of tax cutting conservatives holding traditionalist American values back into Congress in November.
The end of Marxist Fascist Socialism, and it’s attendent homosexuality is neigh!
Is it possible the wierd ballot was a legitimate uncounted ballot. Not enough information here.
If the Republicans want to steal this election, too, they’ll have to be a little more industrious than that. I mean, two tampered ballots will not put Brown in the Senate.
Hey Lord Basil have you ever heard the adage about it being better to be thought an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt? Traditionalist values from the party of senator widestance and Jeff Gannon/Guckert. What a hoot.
They aren’t putting Brown votes into the ballot box. They are handing them back out so they can be reported and then discarded.
ODD! This only “happens” to Coakley supporters. No one voting for Brown says their’s is also marked but also want a ‘clean’ ballot.
Too bad Coakley’s press release about this was dated yesterday!
http://hotair.cachefly.net/images/2010-01/ALERT%21%20Coakley%20Voters%20Report%20Receiving%20Ballots%20Pre-Marked%20For%20Brown.mht
Tell your computer to open it with IE. not surprisingly the Coakley campaign blocked her website from being used with the Internet Archive. Gee I wonder why.
Were there any Black Panthers at the doors of the polling places with billy clubs?
How do they spin the fact that this release was dated the 18th? Paranormal activity?
Were the absentee ballots being handed out on the stret today pre-marked for Coakley?
# Palli | January 19th, 2010 at 04:08 pm
“So what should have “broadcasting the results of the Florida 2000 election before the ballots are even counted” taught us?”
Well for starters, it taught us that calling a state, and subsequently an election, for a certain candidate before all the ballots are counted in a state that was too close to call the entire night is not a very good idea (not to mention the polls were still open on the west coast!).
Oh and by the way… in case you forgot, every news outlet INCLUDING FOX NEWS initially went along with the flow and called Florida for Gore… it wasn’t until later that night as more votes came in that Bush took the lead and Fox retracted its declaration of Gore winning the state and called it for Bush… AND EVERY NEWS AND MEDIA OUTLET FOLLOWED SUIT!
The 2000 election wouldn’t have been nearly the mess it was if the mainstream media didn’t jump the gun and call the election for their preferred candidate in the first place!
Where’s the ballot photo?
To correct this and other issues- we must implement open source software- paper ballot printing systems immediately. The solution to the election system crisis was demonstrated at Linux World by Open Voting Consortium in 2008 . Now we must pressure the officials to disregard Microsoft lobbyists and push toward transparency !!
WARNING: Contains boring minutiae about “behind the scenes” voting from a long time Election Official–but first, sorry, a little shame-out.
Shame on you sub-human beings with your comments about Teddy Kennedy voting and particularly to the insensitive d*ck who compared crumbling Haitian hotels to the infrastructure of the Democratic party.
I have been an Election Official for decades (not in MA). There is a requirement that there always be an odd number of E.O.s, because multiple witnesses are required for everything. And not the same witnesses for each piece of the puzzle. We in pairs plus one (with Diebold optical scan ballots), open sealed packets of ballots. One person writes the ward number down, two others initial the ballot. The initials signify that ONLY THE WARD NUMBER IS WRITTEN ON THE BALLOT–NO MYSTERIOUS MARKS ETC. The same people who initial the ballots are NOT the people who hand out the ballots. You stop at a table and get a voter number–from somebody different. You exchange your voter number 30 feet away from where you initially got your voter number, and that person–who neither verified/initialed the ballots or handed out voter numbers passes out the ballots. There are two places you could go with the ballot–to the “booths”–little stands with visual separation from other voters” or out the door. There is NO WAY you could pre-fill a ballot and get it back into the pile to be voted on again. Ever. Period. Too many eyes on the ballot. The person who hands them out is 1 foot away from the machine the ballots are submitted to. They watch the ballots, and we all watch the tabulator (aka Diebold optical scanner). It either increases the ballot count by one if there is not an over-vote (multiple votes in same election) or it gives an error message. Since I work in a student ward where every election is somebody’s first election, it’s not uncommon that they will vote a straight party ticket at the beginning of the ballot and then vote across ballot for a race.That generates a “beep” rather than an incremental increase.”Beep” message also generates with two candidates voted for in the same election. Long, boring tedious answer, but hopefully sheds a little light on the behind the scenes process.
Do you believe the “election integrity” activists yet? You know those “conspiracy nuts” who say we have to get back to paper ballots ONLY? They’ve only being trying to tell you for five years that electronic voting must go.
Round and round it goes…and will continue until the machines are gone.
Google HACKING DEMOCRACY.
If Texas succeeds, I’m there.
On Wisconsin
Ooops. I meant secede.
Sorry
yea on the nose Work
…;)