BradBlog's investigation of the election system in AR suggests that things don't look good for Halter. AR's vote counting is pretty clearly a mess. Nobody knows nothing though everybody seems ready to take the blame. Everybody believes, contrary to fact, that they are required to have electronic voting machines, in this case, the ES&S Ivotronics which are probably the worst machines out there in almost every respect.
None of the officials that Brad talked to "seemed to be aware of any of the studies and problems with iVotronics . . . until we called them to their attention. Both men seemed to be troubled by the information which they seemed to be hearing for the first time.
"In fact, Lance told us that he thought the ES&S touch-screen systems 'are federally mandated.' They aren't. But apparently both lobbyists and the outgoing Democratic Sec. of State Charlie Daniels have gone out of their way to tell election officials in every Arkansas county that they are.
"Election Integrity advocate Burks explained: 'You must understand that in our state most election commissioners, county clerks, (even the media reported this initially) believe the e-voting machines to be "federally mandated." This was by design. This is part and parcel because our outgoing SOS Charlie Daniels and his staff went county to county telling them they had no choice to purchase the machines because they were 'federally mandated' under HAVA
in 2002 after he was elected to that office.'
"Of course," she continued via email, "the information from ARs Chief Election Officer, SOS Daniels and his Chief Deputy, Janet Miller Harris was completely inaccurate, the electronic voting machines WERE NOT federally mandated, as I explained all across this state, for YEARS. Even AR legislators thought --- and some still do think --- they are federally mandated machines because they believed what the Sec. of State's office said to them."
So the outlook remains grim for Arkansas at this hour. It is also still unknown whether the problem that occurred in Monroe --- whatever it was --- was a problem with the ES&S tabulation system, as suspected by Burks, or something else that may have happened after results left Monroe County, moved across the Internet on rural Monroe's copper wires and then landed in the Sec. of State's election results database and website."
Read the full horror story at BradBlog:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7875
If Halter loses and there are ridiculous election results posted in several counties, don't hold your breath waiting for a recount. Looks like ES&S is preparing the ground for the big rig on election night. There will be no way to know if the results are fraudulent or not of course. The voting system has no system of verification in place except just running the results back thru the machines again, and in fact the ES&S machines may be unverifiable.