What To Do If Machine Flips Your Vote to Romney

If a voting machine is behaving oddly, it doesn’t necessarily mean that anything nefarious is happening. Electronic things can malfunction. If your voting machine isn’t working properly there are some concrete steps you can take to protect your vote and help protect other people’s vote at the same time.

You might have seen circulating around the internet…

The person who posted the video wrote…

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.

The and the voting machine taken out of service. Here at Plunderbund we’ve heard of people having voting machine problems in Summit County and Cuyahoga County. Also, Attorney Victoria Ullmann posted about the vote flipping video this morning and said  she’d experienced a vote flipping machine in 2006.

“This happened to me in 2006. I thought it was because my hands were cold or something and I just pounded on it until it registered the vote properly. Always check the written tab to the right if you use the machine. I reported it as well. It switched from Strickland to a third party candidate in that case. I had no reason to think it would not work and caught it initially when the machine gave me the voting summary before I hit vote. Always check.”

~ Victoria Ullmann

If you or anyone you know is having similar problems call 855-VOTE-199 and help make sure everyone’s right to vote is protected. If you need legal help, you can call 1-866-OUR-VOTE toll-free. Report long lines or voting problems at OurVoteLive.org or via Twitter with hashtag #OVLReport. If possible, use your phone to video the situation or interview the person affected and submit the video to VideoTheVote.org, or post it to YouTube or Twitter tagged with #VideoTheVote.

You can always ask to vote on paper if the machine appears to be malfunctioning. If they try to make you vote on a provisional ballot, document that they did that. Write down names and time and location. Take photos and video if you’re able. Use the methods listed in the previous paragraph to get the word out. Insist that the poll workers give you a regular paper ballot. Don’t believe them if they tell you that provisional ballots and regular paper ballots are “all the same thing.” Call 1-866-OUR-VOTE for legal help and insist on a regular paper ballot.

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