The reality about "vote flipping" machines in NC and elsewhere

[Kelvin Mace]

103. I wrote this back in 2006

I listened to long diatribes from people in excruciating detail about how the GOP was rigging the game and that this was all part of their plan to rig elections nationwide. I was admonished for failing to bring this up again and again.

When I was on Fox's John Gibson show in 2003 I was attacked by some here for my failure to state outright that voting machines were rigged. Gibson himself tried to lead me down that path, and asked me if this was so. I answered that I did not know if that were the case, but as a computer systems engineer what I did know, and what was established fact was that the machines were insecure and easy to tamper with. Gibson had been prepared to deride me for taking a "whacko" viewpoint, instead I wound up getting to talk quite a bit about what was wrong with electronic voting machines. Had I followed people's advice and said the machines were rigged, I would have been savaged by Gibson, and discredited with the media and politicians.

Yet, when I was on the NC Select Committee on E-voting, I still had folks demanding I "blow the lid off the story" and use my position on the committee to "tell people the truth".

I'll ask you the same thing I asked them: Do you want a statement, or do you want a law? You can have one or the other, but not both. I have talked to a lot of reporters and politicians over the last four years, and on many occasions I saw people broach this subject with them. The person made polite noises to the advocate of this view, and after they had left, rolled their eyes and looked at me. I then had to do damage control to remind the politician/reporter of the hard evidence we had found and that these failures were resulting in people's loss of confidence in the electoral process.

Fortunately, this tactic worked.

NO MATTER WHAT *I* believe about elections, as soon as I start down that road with legislators and reporters my credibility is shot and I am effectively neutered. You can deal in fact, or you can deal in conjecture. Getting people to listen to fact is hard enough without wasting time on conjecture.

Let me explain it again for folks who are NOT getting the message: THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE IN THE REAL WORLD OF POLITICS AND THE MEDIA DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO THE VIEW THAT THERE IS A CONSPIRACY BETWEEN THE GOP AND VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES TO RIG ELECTIONS!

People who wander into their office espousing such view are politely thanked and relegated to the same category as people who believe that Alien Autopsy was real. If you are to have ANY chance for change, then you have to have the people in power's attention. If you don't, you will accomplish NOTHING!