Is there a "party default" on touch screen machines? NC votes flip to Obama

Is there a "party default" setting for these machines? Laugh or cry. You know how in   Texas ,and WV  the touchscreens are flipping votes from Obama to McCain? Well, in Tennessee  there were reports  of touchscreens flipping from McCain to Obama. Today I read that in Guilford County some machines were flipping from McCain to Obama. Surprised? It happened before in Oct 2004, in Craven County NC  some votes saw their votes switched from Bush to Kerry

Perhaps TX and WV have a republican default, and NC,  and TN have a democratic default?    Anyway, isn't it time to ditch these touchscreens now that we are all pissed off, in a bi partisan way?

Some machines scramble voter choicesBY DAVID NIVENS dnivens@hpe.com Oct 25,2008

GUILFORD COUNTY - Laurie Edwards of Thomasville heard a strange voting story from her mother this week.

Turns out it's a fairly widespread problem with touch-screen voting machines.

Edwards said her mother, Liz Odom of Greensboro, had problems getting a voting machine in Jamestown to accept her presidential vote on Friday. She cancelled the vote until the machine accepted it.

"I have had several complaints of this happening, with the machines giving the Democratic vote when the Republican was selected," Bill Wright, chairman of the Guilford County Republican Party, told elections officials Friday. "These machines should be calibrated every day so this does not happen."

Election officials agreed to check the iVotronic machines more carefully and urged voters to study the review screens to make sure all their selections are correct before casting the electronic ballot.

"We know not everyone is pushing that review screen button," Wright said.

West Virginia voters have reported similar problems with touch-screen machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software, which is North Carolina's only machine vendor. Experts acknowledge that the machines can scramble vote selections if they are uncalibrated, causing a touch in the wrong place and an incorrect vote selection.

"Voters should tell us if they are having any problems," said Guilford County Elections Director George Gilbert. "If they don't tell us, then we can't know. I don't know how many of these are calibration problems. Some people touch the wrong spot."

Gilbert said older machines present the most problems. Election workers test voting machines before deploying them to voting sites.

"The new ones do not get out of calibration in two weeks of use," he said. "We will find the ones that are out of calibration."

dnivens@hpe.com