The 2006 Mid-term Election

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“Election 2006 gives us no reason to assume that our elections are now being run fairly and honestly. Just the opposite.  Look at the pattern of the last few elections.  We have every reason to believe that the 2008 election is going to be manipulated.”
~ Jonathan Simon, Co-founder, Election Defense Alliance

In the two years after 2004, hundreds of local voting rights and election integrity groups formed around the country, incensed by the evidence of an unsecured election process that demanded immediate attention. These groups began to have an impact. In many states, legislation was enacted to require voter-verified paper records as the “ballot of record”. In some of the states, routine audits were also mandated to insure that votes were counted as they were cast.

At the same time, some national media began to give election integrity issues serious attention. Hundreds of American newspapers also editorialized about the risks of non-verifiable voting systems and the need to improve election safeguards. This overdue attention was well received. But were the problems with the security of our elections solved? Hardly.

As in 2004, reports poured in from around the country in 2006 that our election systems were still broken. Some examples:
• In Waterville, Maine, 27,000 votes were recorded on voting machines in a town with 16,000 registered voters.
• In Williamson County, Texas, touch screen machines counted every vote three times.
• In Marion County, Indiana, thousands of votes were lost when 66 touch screen memory cards went missing.
• In Denver, Colorado, over 20,000 voters were unable to vote due to long lines caused by slow machines. In state after state, problems with electronic voting continued to be reported and continued to improperly influence elections.

In addition, election researchers who compared the 2006 exit polls with the “reported” vote estimated that Democratic congressional candidates lost 3 million votes nationwide. They calculated the odds were greater than 1 in 10,000 that reported vote discrepancies occurred only by chance.

Jonathan Simon, along with Bruce O’Dell, prepared the following detailed report for the Election Defense Alliance analyzing the 2006 exit polls and vote count data:
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/landslide_denied_exit_polls_vs_vote_count_2006