A Dozen Reports Of Machines Vote Flipping In Pulaski County
by October 30, 2014 10:24 pm 151 views
Alexis Rogers with our content partner, KATV News, reports:
The Pulaski County Election Commission has received a dozen reports claiming voting machines are changing people’s votes. Three of the 12 reports came from North Little Rock voters who voted at Laman Library.
Bryan Poe, Pulaski County’s Director of Elections, said the commission is asking voters to be extra cautious.
“We’re not the only ones that have experienced something like this. I’ve heard reports from Lonoke County, Franklin County, and I have also heard reports from Maryland, Illinois, Tennessee and Texas,” Poe said. “They would go to select one candidate and it would select a different candidate for them. That’s generally an issue that occurs with the calibration of the machine.”
Poe said due to the machines being older, election officials will now have to check the machines daily.
“Since we’ve determined that this is mostly a recalibration issue, what we’re doing is we are recalibrating every machine in the county every single day,” Poe said.
Rob Hammons, Director of Elections for Arkansas Secretary of State, said the state will need to replace them soon.
“We’re growing to the point where it’s time to replace them. Now we’re looking hopefully going forward in the next years replacing those as we go throughout the state,” Hammons said.
According to Poe, the state spent a considerable amount of money for Pulaski County’s machines.
“Whenever these were purchased in 2006, we spent roughly a million dollars on just getting machines for Pulaski County,” Poe said.
“You can go upwards, roughly guesstimating upwards of $30 million plus for the whole state,” Hammons said.
The Pulaski County Election Commission has a plan if voters notify officials about faulty machines.
“The first thing we’ll do is we’ll shut it down, we’ll have the voter vote on another machine, we’ll send a tech out there to inspect a machine, and recalibrate it, and then we will open it back up,” Poe said. “If there’s a second report on that, then what we’ll do is just go ahead and close the machine, pull it off the line, and we will send out a replacement machine.”
Until then, election officials ask voters to keep an eye on their machines to make sure their ballots are correct.
No machines have been completely pulled, and election officials have not been able to replicate the same actions.
Watch a video report and check out the comments section of Rogers’ report at this link.