Voting Machine Changes Barack Obama Vote To Mitt Romney In Viral Video
A voting machine repeatedly changes a vote for Barack Obama to Mitt Romney in a video that has gone viral on the internet.
The voting machine video showed up on Reddit this morning, where it quickly became one of the most popular links on the user-generated site. It shows the inside of a video screen voting machine, and, when the voter presses the Obama button, a check appears next to Romney’s name instead.
Reddit user centralpavote says he shot the video this morning. He included a description of the events in the comments:
“My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.
“I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping very closely together to find the ‘active areas’. From the top of Romney’s button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama’s name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein’s button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
“I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said “It’s nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.” and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.”
The voting machine video was not the first instance of a malfunctioning machine. Earlier this week an Ohio early voter reported that his vote for Mitt Romney was changed to Barack Obama instead.
While the voting machine video changing Obama’s vote to Romney has started some conspiracy theories, other commenters have noted a simpler explanation — the touch screens were probably calibrated poorly, causing the sensor to believe the voter had touched the area for Mitt Romney.
