Published: October 30, 2008 07:40 pm      

Video spurs concerns over West Virginia voting machines

CHARLESTON — A video that appears to highlight a problem with West Virginia’s touch-screen voting machines has become an Internet hit. But state election officials argue it is misleading and meant to scare voters.

The video shows Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright demonstrating how the machines can switch votes from one candidate to another when not calibrated properly.

The problem appears to persist even after Waybright calibrates the machine. Waybright selects the straight Republican ticket, and then tries to vote for third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader. But when he tries to return his vote to straight Republican, the machine retains his choice of Nader.

The two-minute video has received 385,682 hits on YouTube. State election officials say they have repeatedly rechecked the devices following complaints of flipped votes and that the video is misleading.

Waybright “misspoke and stated the machine was still out of calibration,” said Deputy Secretary of State Sarah Bailey. “However, this was precisely how the machine was designed to operate, which Mr. Waybright later recognized.”

Bailey said the machines allow voters to select a straight ticket and then depart from that for individual races. She said Secretary of State Betty Ireland plans to complain about the video to the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“We feel the video was designed to scare voters, which may amount to voter suppression,” Bailey said Wednesday.

But the group that made it, Video the Vote, says it underscores how these machines can confuse people.

“This guy is in charge of making sure these machines are calibrated and working properly,” said Ian Inaba, a co-founder of Video the Vote. “If he needed a second chance, what does that mean for voters on Election Day who won’t get a second chance?”

Video the Vote has since posted its full, nearly 36-minute interview with Waybright. The group began in 2006 as an online forum, modeled after YouTube, for exchanging videos that focus on voting problems and issues.

“There is a great concern among the American public around these electronic voting machines,” said Inaba. He cited complaints following the 2006 election in Florida, where electronic ballots were blamed when some 18,000 voters failed to mark a congressional race. Vote-switching complaints have also arisen in Tennessee and Texas this year, Inaba said.

Bailey said the group’s posting of the full interview does not remedy what she alleged was “irresponsible journalism at best and fraudulent and deliberately misleading at worst.” Inaba said the situation instead is a chance to help voters avoid confusion.

“We think that’s preposterous,” he said of the vow to file a Justice Department complaint. “We look into issues of voter suppression. That’s the last thing we would want to do.”

Jackson is one of several West Virginia counties where a handful of residents — less than 15, state officials say — have complained that their votes have flipped from Democratic to Republican candidates. In-person early voting, which began Oct. 15 and ends Saturday, had yielded more than 87,115 ballots casts as of Tuesday.

Those complaining voters have all ultimately cast correct ballots, Ireland said. She has also cited testing by her office that shows votes switch when voters tap their screens outside the small checkoff boxes next to each candidate’s name.

Ireland has urged all counties to recalibrate their machines each morning of voting, and suggested they issue stylus pointers to voters. She also advises voters to seek help immediately from poll workers with any problems, and check the paper printout of their ballot before leaving the voting booth.

Two voter advocacy groups, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and Verified Voting, touted Ireland’s recommendations as “best practices” in a Monday letter to officials in 16 other states that use the same kind of touch-screen machines.

West Virginia’s 55 counties each employ at least one iVotronic device from Election Systems & Software in every precinct, to ensure that disabled voters can cast ballots unassisted. Thirty-five counties rely solely on iVotronic machines for all voting.