Tell me about the issues with the voting machines in the 2000/2004 elections?

Question

What kind of machines were the ones that screwed up? What was the problem.

What were the technological issues (specifically with the machines, or the physical voting process) that made these elections so controversial.

Thanks

Answer 1

are you talking about the FL ISSUE. NOBODY EVER REALLY KNEW .

Answer 2

Diebold, Sequoia and ES@S are the three main voting machine manufacturers and they are owned by Republicans.

Go on the internet or ON DEMAND and watch HBO's "Hacking Democracy". They go over all the problems with the companies.

Since Republicans owned the machines, it appears they were rigged to vote for Republicans.

One Democratic candidate tried to vote for herself and watched the machine constantly pick the other candidate-- a Republican. It couldn't be fixed.

Another Republican who owned the machines but was not popular, won the election anyway.

Not enough machines were sent to Black communities so they were on lines for 12 hours.

In one town, President Bush received 350,000 consecutive votes in a row. Votes are usually mixed.

Pegs were placed on some machines the night before the election which screwed with the inner workings

Kerry received 6 votes in one town where an unknown candidate received a hundred thousand votes.

In Pennsylvania in some towns, there were more votes registered in the machines than there were people.

There are too many incidents to list here.

When the 2006 elections came around, citizens decided to bring their videocameras to the polls in case there were problems.

They also held candlelight vigils after the polls closed so that Republicans would know they weren't the only ones around when the votes were being counted.

Go to Blackboxvoting.org and look up some of the problems.

Research is fun. More people should do it.

Answer 3

The main issues in Florida in 2000:

The type of ballot that was used. It was a punch ballot. One problem in the recount was determining if the vote had actually been made (hence the term "hanging chad"); the other was the placement of names on the ballot.

There's a picture of the butterfly ballot used on this page:
http://images.ask.com/fr?q=2000+florida+ballot&desturi=http%3A%2F%2Fboston.k12.ma.us%2Flyndon%2FClassrooms%2Fgibbons%2Fvoting_and_election_facts.htm&fm=i&ac=2&ftURI=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.ask.com%2Ffr%3Fq%3D2000%2Bflorida%2Bballot%26desturi%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fboston.k12.ma.us%252Flyndon%252FClassrooms%252Fgibbons%252Fvoting_and_election_facts.htm%26imagesrc%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fupload%252F6%252F66%252FButterfly_large.jpg%26thumbsrc%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252F65.214.37.88%252Fts%253Ft%253D15902675206385767342%26thumbuselocalisedstatic%3Dfalse%26fn%3DButterfly_large.jpg%26f%3D2%26fm%3Di%26ftbURI%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fimages.ask.com%252Fpictures%253Fq%253D2000%252Bflorida%252Bballot%2526page%253D2&qt=0

There are two holes very close to Al Gore's name. If you selected one, Gore got the vote; if you selected the other, Pat Buchanan got the vote. It was interesting that Buchanan (a far-right conservative) got a majority of his votes in a primarily Jewish neighborhood.

Also, about 180,000 votes were not counted, having been rejected for being mistakenly filled out. In some counties, the machines allowed the voter to try again and correct the mistake; in other counties, those correction mechanisms were not enabled on the machines.

The machines were disabled disproportionately in African-American and Hispanic counties.

57,000 voters were listed as "felons" and not allowed to vote. However, many were incorrectly listed (again, disproportionately Democrats).

There were many voting irregularities with machines in the 2004 election as well. Lots of info here: http://ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htm

Answer 4

In both cases, it was only an issue because the democrats lost. Had they won, they would never have complained. Look at the gubernatorial elections last year in the state of Washington. I rest my case.

Answer 5

The issue went away after the Democrats won. Interesting, huh?