As regular Politizine readers know, I have been very critical of some of the computer voting conspiracies floated by liberal Democrats in the last year. I have no qualms about their comments and fears concerning DRE or touch-screen computer voting machines. Those machines have no paper trail and should not be used. However, I have challenged them on their comments about optical scanning machines, which scan paper ballots, and have used statistical and actual election data to disprove many of their accusations.
Earlier this month, Republicans won gubernatorial seats in Kentucky and Mississippi, and the accusations that Republicans were rigging the machines, continued.
However, Saturday, a Democrat, Kathleen Blanco, beat Republican Bobby Jindal for the governor's seat in Louisiana during their run-off election Saturday. The turnout was about 51 percent [Louisiana, a conservative, southern state, allows for a run-off election when one candidate does not receive 50 percent of the vote in a primary election - unlike supposedly liberal states like Massachusetts which don't have run-offs. Also, 18 candidates participated in the primary].
Blanco, who ran as a fiscally-conservative Democrat, was predicted to fail but will now be the state's first female governor. According to press reports, the race was a bitter one - with Jindal, a self-proclaimed conservative Native American Indian and former member of the Bush administration, exchanging jabs with Blanco. New Orlean's Democratic Mayor Ray Nagin even shocked fellow Democrats when he endorsed Jindal. Most polls had Jindal winning the race.
However, Jindal didn't win the race, Blanco did. So, after seeing a little clip about the election results, I did some googling. And guess what I found? Louisiana has ES&S voting machines!: ["McKeithen plans to standardize Louisiana's voting machines"].
McKeithen indicated he likely will scrap the state's newest portable touch-screen voting machines, which are used in two parishes and in absentee voting, after malfunctions and problems created costly headaches. "I told the people who make them, 'We're going to use them to get through this election cycle. We make no promises to you after that,'" McKeithen told the Press Club of Baton Rouge on Monday, calling the touch-screen voting machines that malfunctioned last year during fall elections "horrible."
Later, McKeithen said this:
McKeithen said he didn't expect any problems with the touch-screen machines in the Nov. 15 runoff. "It's going to be accurate. It's just not going to be real fast or easily done," he said.
Well, actually, the tally was pretty fast and probably accurate. The article states that Louisiana has over 10,000 voting machines. It should be noted that during the fall elections last year, Mary Landrieu, a conservative Democrat, was reelected to the U.S. Senate despite a Republican sweep everywhere else across the country.
However, if the computer voting conspiracy is true and rightwing Christians who give money to Bush are hacking into voting machines they made and changing the results, how come a Democrat won in Louisiana?
Is Howard Dean another Bill Clinton?
Mokhiber and Weissman let a former Conservation Law Foundation attorney in Vermont take shots at Howard Dean: ["Howard Clinton?"].
