Block The Vote
IBD Editorials
Posted 10/26/2010 07:04 PM ET
Rule Of Law: Suspicious voting-machine malfunctions and cheating candidates are the stuff of banana republics, not America. With Democrats about to suffer historic losses, is our election's integrity in question?
'It can't happen here," most Americans would say about the chances of voting one way and seeing your votes recorded the opposite. But that's what happened in early voting in North Carolina's unfortunately named Craven County last week.
Voter Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern found that "an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended," the New Bern Sun Journal reported.
Laughinghouse "pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked," the local paper reported. "He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result."
Election personnel eventually straightened it out, but clearly a less observant Republican voter would have inadvertently voted for every Democrat on his ballot. Chuck Tyson, chairman of the Craven County Republican Party, told the Sun Journal he "got two or three calls" from voters experiencing the same problem and is not satisfied with state election officials' efforts to fix it.
In Boulder City, Nev., meanwhile, where voters use computer screens, another disturbing episode was reported by Fox News. When voter Joyce Ferrara and her husband went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, they — and several others, according to Ferrara — found that Democratic incumbent Harry Reid's name was already checked. The county registrar's explanation: The high-tech voting screens are sensitive.
The Nevada case is especially disturbing because the seat of the most powerful Democrat in the Senate is at stake.
Beyond suspicious voting procedures, there are also practices better suited to children's playground games than the political contests of a mature constitutional Republic.
The Democratic nominee for governor in Florida, state chief financial officer Alex Sink, was caught cheating in CNN's gubernatorial debate Monday night, breaking the ground rules by viewing a text message from an aide during a commercial break.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic House candidate Bryan Lentz last week admitted to helping a third-party Tea Party candidate get on the ballot to siphon votes away from GOP nominee Pat Meehan.
Me - 'Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry and his campaign manager, Genesis Robinson, were arrested Wednesday, charged with committing absentee ballot fraud during Henry’s 2010 re-election campaign, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office said. .... The arrest of Henry and Robinson comes a little more than two months after Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall requested an investigation into irregularities in absentee ballot requests coming into her office. ...
Power is hard to give up, but when those in power compromise campaign and election rules, we cross a sacrosanct threshold.
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