There are two letters currently posted at the North Carolina Board of Elections site that deserve widespread attention.
The State Republican Party is claiming that electronic voting machines in certain Republican counties are wrongly defaulting Democratic; they are demanding that election workers warn every voter of this. The state has come back with an answer, hitting back hard on these complaints.
The links for the letters are currently on the front page of the Board of Election's website:
http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/
The GOP points to what the Board of Elections calls "isolated" instances where people have found out that their ballots contained mistakes. They found this out by being prompted by voting machines, before they finalized their ballot, to make certain that they have voted for the candidates as they intended. In every instance where the screen showed a wrong entry, this was rectified by the voter and by the election workers in a regularized manner. The State Board of Elections has stated that in no cases have the Republicans come up with any evidence whatsover that the machines are defaulting Democratic, and there have been no instances where voters who have noticed the problem have not had it rectified on the spot.
What the GOP now appears to be saying is that there must be TONS more instances where voters voted Democratic meaning to vote Republican and didn't notice it when the machine asked "Are you sure you want to vote this way?" They are asking that every voter be specifically warned of this as they come into the polls. SBOE insists that every voting machine already contains these warnings, and there is also a paper record.
Democrats are casting a lot more votes in early voting than Republicans. We've got a really good GOTV effort going here. African Americans are coming out in strong numbers. So far the totals in early voting are 45.7% cast by dems (335,991) and 37.2% cast by Republicans (273,217). So far they are losing in the larger counties and cities and not getting out sufficient numbers of their voters in smaller rural districts. See the breakdown here:
http://www.carolinatransparency.com/...
and here: ftp://www.app.sboe.state.nc.us/ENRS/absentee11xx02xx2010_Stats.pdf
I'm still pessimistic about these elections and I am wondering why Republicans in this state feel a need to make excuses in advance, just in case, for why they might not do as well as they've all led the pollsters and the media to believe.
Look, we all admit that there are problems with electronic voting, but in these instances it looks like all the problems were rectified. In every instance brought up by republicans, voters noticed immediately that they hadn't voted as intended, there was a way to check their vote, and they corrected their vote.
If Republicans are serious about correcting the huge voting issues revolving around electronic machines, then let's work together inbetween elections to resolve these problems. (I'm frankly wondering where they were after the 2000 election.)