The Gamut

I have been working on a theory. I admit that it’s far-fetched, and I hope it’s wrong, but I want to put it out there just in case.

There has been a lot of speculation about the threat of paperless voting machines. Much of the concern is that there is no way to recheck the vote. Some has to do with security risks in the system. Some has to do with the threat of power-outages or bad code. And all of it was fueled by the statement by the Diebold company head that he is, "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

But I recently learned that there are only seven counties in the entire state that will definitely have the machines in place for the November election.



I’ve manipulated this map from the original so that counties which are only considering getting the machines after the November election are now shown as considering Diebold. My reason for this will become clear.

Once I learned that only seven counties statewide were going to have the machines, it got me to wondering if these counties were entrenched GOP or democrat strongholds. I looked up the results for the 2000 election and the results were surprising.



Five of the counties are GOP counties, one (Franklin county, home of the state capital) is moderate, and one (Mahoning) is extremely democratic. My next step was to overlay the two maps to see if any patterns emerged.



Those purple counties are considering using Diebold machines in this election, and they are all republican strongholds. I suspect many of them will decide to use the machines for certain by November. There red counties on this map are counties which vote democratic and which are considering the machines, but I doubt that they will.

Now, here is the thing about Mahoning County. It’s Jim Traficant territory. These people are died-in-the-wool democrats AND paranoid about the feds.

So, what do I think is going to happen? Well, I’m not sure exactly. But I would not be surprised if the republicans don’t somehow use Mahoning county to stage the next Miami-Dade-style election theft.

The theory I’m leaning toward is that they will give the county to Kerry but only by a very slim margin. Franklin County will go to Bush by about 15%, and the remaining counties will be Bush landslides. (All accomplished through software manipulation at Diebold HQ.) Then THEY will demand a recount in Mahoning County. Only no recount will be possible. The democrats will then be forced to defend the vote (and the Diebold machines) in that one county. Their argument will have to be that it is not surprising that Mahoning went democratic, and meanwhile the state will have been easily won by W.

I hope I’m wrong, but if the vote DOES go this way, at least somebody will be able to point to this entry and say, "J’accuse!"

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