Voter Finds Another Romney-Loving Machine in Pennsylvania

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

County officials have found another Romney-loving robot: A faulty electronic voting machine in Union County, Pennsylvania, has been recalibrated and put back online after it wouldn’t allow a vote for President Obama, Mother Jones has confirmed.

Earlier today, MJ reported on another incident this morning in Perry County, Pennsylvania, in which a voting computer’s touchscreen ballot converted all Obama votes into votes for Romney. The second machine came to light after a local college professor found he couldn’t cast his vote for Obama on it.

“I spoke with a poll worker there and saw her fold up the machine. I also called [a national wattchdog hotline] to report the incident,” said Andy Hirsch, director of media communications at Bucknell University, who posted a video of the machine’s malfunction on Vimeo after it failed to record his ballot choices.

John Showers, chairman of the board of elections for Union County, confirmed that there was a problem with the calibration of the machine; the problem has since been fixed, and the machine has been returned to service. He said: “In general, there’s a calibration issue with one machine in each election here, so we had this one, and it was taken care of,” he said.

Hirsch said he’d learned about that previous machine snafu in Perry County, just before he set out for his own polling station. “I watched that video right before I left, and wondered whether or not it was real,” he said. “Now I’m not surprised!”

Watch the video here:

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate