This is a dystopian nightmare come true, and it’s happening today, not in some far flung fascist future. Three reports were filed of voting machines in two counties in Mississippi registering wrong ballots before they were taken out of service and a technician called. Bill Waller Jr. and Tate Reeves are in a runoff for Mississippi governor in the Republican primary. And a voting machine kept changing votes cast for Waller to Reeves, to the understandable alarm of voters who saw this happening before their eyes and couldn’t do anything about it. Clarion Ledger:
He says, “It is not letting me vote for who I want to vote for.” A woman in the background asks, “How can that happen?”
[…]
Two other machines in Calhoun County have also “jumped,” with at least one voter also attempting to vote for Waller but having their ballot automatically changed to Reeves, said Circuit Clerk Carlton Baker.
At the Northeast Calhoun precinct, also known as Chickenbone Baptist Church, a woman complained after “mashing the button” three times to vote for Waller but the machine kept switching her vote to Reeves, Baker said. On her fourth attempt, the machine cast her ballot for Waller. As of 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, a technician was working on the machine.
Then, at the Masonic Hall precinct in Vardaman, another voter complained of the machine “jumping” when they tried to cast their ballot. Baker did not know who that voter was attempting to vote for. That machine was taken out of commission until the technician could arrive, Baker said.
There are 9,328 registered voters in Calhoun County and 10 precincts, he said.
I can’t embed a 14 second video from Facebook showing this phenomenon, but hit the link above, or here, to the Clarion Ledger. We need to get on top of election security and stay on top of it, or all our efforts will be for naught. This is the stuff political nightmares are made of.
And guess who is clearly the more conservative? Waller even campaigned on expanding Medicaid, and was accused in Tate Reeves commercials of being a “Jackson liberal” (Jackson is more liberal, but that doesn’t make Waller one, it just makes Reeves a Trumpier RWer).
Had you told me yesterday that there would be “vote changing” in the MS primary (this isn’t an election), I would have said that it would definitely go toward Tate Reeves.
This is where the Republican party is, people. No matter how conservative, and Waller is a former S.Ct justice down here, and plenty conservative, it doesn’t matter. As long as a candidate can paint the himself as more conservative, he will win with Repubs.
The really interesting thing is that because they never adopted state-wide Obamacare, rural hospitals are closing at an alarming rate, a rate that is terrifying the rural vote. That is why Waller backed it, stating it was the only way to save your hospital, and it has registered some. Ironically, it will – AGAIN – be the southern country conservative that votes in their opposite interest, and will close down the closest emergency ER, which will certainly cost lives, and not the lives in “liberal Jackson,” either.
Interesting progression with the GOP. First the voter suppression, especially of POC, then the gerrymandering, then the bots of 2016, and now they’re just going to rig the freaking machinery — while Moscow Mitch stands by and refuses to safeguard our freedoms. My God. This iteration of the GOP is worse than ever. They make Nixon look like an eagle scout.
Watching documentaries on WW2, I remember seeing ballots ‘pre marked’ for A. Hitler being given to voters by young looking thugs wearing all brown. kind of like signing up for some sort of subscription online and they conveniently already have the little itty bitty auto renew box checked, for your convenience. Very nice.
I’m from Mississippi and this doesn’t bother me. No matter who wins it will be a Trump Conservative or after Trump leaves the winner will be a super conservative who votes against any progressive program. So it’s either tweedle dee or tweedle dum.
If your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t need to create voter suppression or create propaganda to get your vote the way they do, it’d be meaningless, so they’d just let you vote. Believing a conspiracy hoax about tweedle Dee or tweedle dumb is letting the propaganda work on you. Your vote and your opinion have been successfully repressed. congrats you lose.
You don’t seem to understand. One Mississippi Republican is just like another and are easily interchanged. So it really doesn’t matter which one you vote for you get a bad politician with very little difference from the other. Been there, seen that, have the tee shirt.