Voting Machines

With elections coming up in two weeks, and all of us interested in the outcome in races both national and local, it's heartwarming to see stories like this, where voting machines screw up the vote.

CHICAGO — Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats.

Say what?  Votes were being transformed from Republican to Democrat? No, that can't be right.

 Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library.

“I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

I'm sure that it's just a simple calibration error.   The commissioner of elections provides an explanation.

“This was a calibration error of the touch-screen on the machine,” Scalzitti said. “When Mr. Moynihan used the touch-screen, it improperly assigned his votes due to improper calibration.”

I'm sure that it was a simple calibration error, and I notice that this story comes from Chicagoland.  I also wonder how many other machines suffer from "calibtation errors"and I notice that those calibration errors tend to favor Democrats.  Coincidence?  Who can tell?