perfidy

I would encourage the two Ministers who live in the greater Fairfax County, VA area to take a look at this.

t took more than 21 hours from the time polls closed Tuesday night for Fairfax County, the putative high-tech capital of the region, to get final election results from its new, computerized vote machines.

Widespread problems in the system, which the county paid $3.5 million to install, also opened the door to possible election challenges by party leaders and candidates.

School Board member Rita S. Thompson (R), who lost a close race to retain her at-large seat, said yesterday that the new computers might have taken votes from her. Voters in three precincts reported that when they attempted to vote for her, the machines initially displayed an "x" next to her name but then, after a few seconds, the "x" disappeared.

In response to Thompson's complaints, county officials tested one of the machines in question yesterday and discovered that it seemed to subtract a vote for Thompson in about "one out of a hundred tries," said Margaret K. Luca, secretary of the county Board of Elections.

"It's hard not to think that I have been robbed," said Thompson, whose 77,796 recorded votes left her 1,662 shy of reelection. She is considering her next step, and said she was wary of challenging the election results: "I'm not sure the county as a whole is up for that. I'm not sure I'm up for that."

Y'all have noted previously that there were some apparent aberrations in Fairfax County voting procedure in this last election, and this article suggests that the entire chain is flawed, from the operation of the kiosks to vote collection to vote counting. Now, if this were Nicaragua we'd say it's business as usual. But it ain't. This is scary.

Eugene Volokh has more on other irregularities around the country, with special attention to Diebold's repeated attempts to convince us that danger is safety and vulnerability is security.