In light of the recently passed midterm election, my hope is that it might be advisable to mention some of the shortcomings that come along with voting machine technology, for they are important to take into account.
In foreseeing the ill-reasoned judgements of some who might seek to assign me the dreaded label of “election denier,” or worse, I will have it known that I am not purporting that the recent midterm election was stolen.
But nor can I claim that this midterm election can be wholly ordered and trustworthy when technology is looked towards as the sole means to deliver fair and accurate political decision-making.
I am only saying that technology always carries with it consequences, and it is clear to see that this rule applies to voting machines, like every other one of its forms.
Resultantly, the events of the technology is difficult to foreknow.
Per technology’s unpredictable nature, many have been unable to anticipate how technologies intended to provided added security to the integrity of elections, such as ballot-counting machines, could actually decrease our culture’s peace of mind in such campaigns.
Of course, I am also not attempting here to further a Republican or Democrat world-view.
My point is to merely address the consequences of ballot-counting machines.
Naturally, this dilemma is nothing new, for those who paid attention to the matter will recall that similar accusations took place during the 2020 presidential election. Furthermore, those quick to label those who ask questions about voting machines as “election deniers” may have forgotten that Hillary Clinton launched similar accusations following her loss in the 2016 presidential election, as many before her had also done.
Nonetheless, as some have long-forecasted, it seems that similar episodes have come to pass during the 2022 midterm elections, in which voting machines were reported to have failed in GOP precincts in battleground states.
On November 8, reports suggested that voting machines in Arizona’s Maricopa County were suffering errors in different precincts. As a result, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake would come to scold Maricopa County leadership over reports of vote tabulation machines breaking down.
Conservative activist Tyler Bowyer would tweet a video alongside the words, “Long lines in Anthem, Arizona with Poll Workers explaining that the @maricopacounty machines are not working.”
Likewise, journalist Jack Posobiec would tweet a video in addition to saying, “BREAKING: Now issues reported with machines in Wickenburg, AZ, northwest Maricopa. Worker tells the voter to stop filming.”
Food scientist Mike Adams would put things this way: “The Democrat playbook for stealing elections is both simple and sinister: Push a nationwide plandemic to justify widespread mail-in voting. Send out millions of ballots in the mail so that extra ballots are easy to come by. Delay vote counting any time a Republican is winning, and use the delay to scrounge up whatever number of Democrat ballots is necessary to ‘win.’ Rinse, then repeat in 2022, 2024, 2026, etc. Keep the plandemics going, the masks going, the media psyop going, the mail-in ballots going and the rigged elections going. That’s where we are in America today, and the latest victim of this election theft fraud is Kari Lake, who should have already been declared Governor-Elect of Arizona. Instead, the media called her corrupt opponent, Katie Hobbs, the ‘winner’ of the race, and anyone who questions the steal will be called an ‘election denier’ and an ‘enemy of democracy.’”
The same day, reports surfaced purporting that voting machines were also experiencing problems in the state of New Jersey.
According to a report by the Daily Caller, at least 62% of voting centers in Arizona’s Maricopa County experienced problems with voting machines on Election Day. The report disclosed that the tabulators and printers at the voting centers were malfunctioning. Also cited by the report was the state’s Attorney General, Mark Brnovich, who is seeking answers to these troubling occurrences.
But, as I have said, these technological developments are not exclusive to the 2022 midterm elections.
One article from The New York Times detailed the experience of an election day in Pennsylvania’s Northhampton county, in which faulty voting machines provided false numbers, in at least one judge’s election. “Though there has been no conclusive study as to what caused the machines to malfunction, as the machines are locked away for 20 days after an election according to state law, the prevailing theory is that the touch screens were plagued by a bug in the software,” wrote The Times. “A senior intelligence official who focuses on election security said there were no visible signs of outside meddling by any foreign actors.”
According to a September 16, 2022 article from the Associated Press, “Sensitive voting system passwords posted online. Copies of confidential voting software available for download. Ballot-counting machines inspected by people not supposed to have access. The list of suspected security breaches at local election offices since the 2020 election keeps growing, with investigations underway in at least three states -- Colorado, Georgia and Michigan.”
In Pueblo, Colorado, a man was arrested by the Pueblo Police Department for tampering with a voting machine system at a local voting station during the June, 2022 primary elections, the Colorado TV station KRDO 13 reported.
Of course, the fact that machine technology always carries with it errors is so evident that it is difficult for one to make the case that they are ignorant of such a widely-recognized truism.
Surely, for who has not observed a perturbing moment where a specific technology fails to carry out its province fittingly? For some, interrupted Wi-Fi signals, a frozen computer monitor, lapses in cell-phone service coverages, an internet search that fails to provide an answer sought in a prompt manner, a slow pace of video buffering, an inability to connect to connect a device to Bluetooth, data transfers corrupting files, a printer that does not print as fast as one would hope or a computer that does not respond quickly to commands and much more clearly buttresses the understanding that technologies of endless variety are subject to unexpected malfunctions and errors which are experienced daily by tens of millions throughout the world.
And it is clear to see that voting machines are no exception.
To be true, this point can be effectively underlined through the realization that, whereas voting machines have a propensity to suffer ill-timed errors, paper ballots do not crash.
This is not to say that it is impossible for voting machines to deliver honest calculations of ballots.
I mean only that those thoughtful of technology’s consequential nature would not count on it.