(Much to the Dismay of Diebold Spokesmen and the San Diego County Registrar...Who Believe Election Workers Would Never Commit a Felony to Game an Election!)
By Brad Friedman on 6/22/2006, 8:30am PT  

(Hat tip to "journalist" "Jeff Gannon" who thought we'd not be interested in covering this story! Wrong again, old boy! Thanks for the tip!)

Apparently, it's neither a case of "sour grapes" nor "sore losers" when Republicans challenge elections that they reportedly lost. That's only the case when Democrats charge irregularities or illegalities in an election. And, of course, when it's a Republican whose ox has been gored, the GOP uses every available means to fight the results of the election, and the courts and the legislatures usually play along. And nobody bothers to call them "tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists." Go figure.

Yesterday, in Tennessee, three poll workers were indicted for adding ballots to an election for the state Senate in which a Democrat won by 13 votes.

Of course, the GOP has fought that election tooth and nail, as the GOP, unlike Democrats, always do. And they've even managed to convince the state Senate to overturn the election due to their "allegations" of "irregularities."

As you'll see in the report from AP, the idea of poll workers gaming an election has once again occured. That, despite many absurd claims of late from Diebold spokesperson David Bear to NEWSWEEK, NYTimes and others to this effect...

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," [Diebold spokesman, David Bear] said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Believe it, bitch.

Or this equally absurd comment from San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas who discounted concerns of sending easily-hacked Diebold voting machines home for overnights with poll workers just before the Busby/Bilbray election. Even though the machines are incredibly vulnerable to tampering, and storage in poll workers' cars cannot be considered secure --- by Haas' own admission --- there is little to worry about when it comes to fears of poll workers doing anything untoward. As he made clear to me, "you'd have to want to commit a felony, which knocks out most of our poll workers."

Despite plenty of recent examples of "evil and nefarious elections officials" who were more than willing to "commit a felony," it looks like the story out of Tennessee yesterday makes the case against Haas and Bear's feigned Pollyanna-isms. Again.

As reported by AP (emphasis added)...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Three poll workers accused of casting ballots in the name of dead voters were among six people indicted on charges of violating election laws in a state Senate race, a prosecutor announced Wednesday.
...
Democrat Ophelia Ford was certified the winner over Republican Terry Roland by 13 votes last September. The state Senate overturned the election this year amid allegations of irregularities.
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None of those indicted worked for either of the campaigns and neither candidate has been accused of wrongdoing, officials said.

In regard to the "dead voters" who were mentioned above, by the way, from my reading of the story --- to the dismay of the Rightwingers pushing for disenfranchising Photo ID laws, such as fake journalist "Jeff Gannon" who first brought this story to my attention --- since this was a matter of poll workers stuffing the ballot box, no amount of Photo ID requirements would have kept them from being able to do so.

The Photo ID issue remains a ploy to keep Democratic-leaning voters from voting. Millions of them. Period. And until any of these so-called "conservatives" who act as if they give a damn about "ballot integrity" insist on Photo ID requirements for Absentee and Military ballots, their disingenuous arguments will be seen as little more than hollow, un-American rhetoric.

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