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This blog is sad news to me because it involves my home state of Kentucky. We’ve made national news and it’s not good.

A Circuit Court Judge and a County Clerk from Clay County (KY) have been arrested and charged with various federal crimes involving elections and election returns. Clay County uses ES&S iVotronic vote-counting machines, which leave no paper trail.

“The details suggest that there were two parts to the vote changing. First, there was traditional vote buying — where they paid people to vote in a certain way. However, the second involved actually changing voters’ votes on ES&S e-voting machines. It didn’t involve any hacking or direct security flaws — but the elections officials made use of the confusing user interface and process of the e-voting machines to trick voters into leaving before their votes had been cast. That’s because there’s a “vote” button, that some people (silly them!) assumed meant they actually voted. Nope. It turns out that just gets you to a page to review your vote and then confirm it. However, these elections officials told people that once they hit vote they had voted — and were then able to go in and change the actual votes.”

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090319/2040534190.shtml