Voting machine irregularities in Lowndes County?

After seeing reports of Democrats being required to vote provisionally in three different polling places (Clyattville, Hahira, and Trinity Baptist Church), I called Lowndes County Elections Supervisor Deb Cox at 229-671-2850.

She said the problem was in creating the cards for voting, not in the actual voting machines. A separate machine called an Express Poll creates the cards. She said it was in the program on the Express Poll machines, which was uploaded improperly. The result was that some people couldn’t get cards. Meanwhile, people could still vote using provisional ballots. She says it’s been fixed, and nobody has reported any problems since early this morning. This is the same thing she told Valdosta Today.

When I told her people had also been reporting that they got a card and found that they were marked as Republican when they asked for a Democratic ballot. Deb Cox said nobody has reported that to her. She asks for anybody who sees that or any other voting problems to please call her office, 229-671-2850.

If you have any difficulties, ask for a provisional ballot and call that number.

I also reminded her that I had pointed out years ago that the electronic voting machines Lowndes County uses had been established by experts in the field to be easy to subvert. I assured her that nobody was accusing her of anything, but the point remains that somebody else easily could subvert the voting machines and we have no paper trail. See for example Vote Flipping and Touchscreens, by Matt Blaze, 3 November 2008. Deb Cox said as she had back then that that was above her pay grade. Decisions on what hardware and software to use for voting are made in Atlanta. We need to get that fixed.

Meanwhile, get out and vote!

The best prevention of vote flipping is massive voting. And it can be detected statistically after the fact, as for example appears to be the case for Kansas.

So the best thing to do is to go vote!

If you don’t know where, check My Voter Page by the Georgia Secretary of State. If you need directions, see the handy Lowndes County Board of Elections list of precincts with links to maps.

It’s primary election day!

-jsq