Voteless History

Electronic Voting Machines Flip Alabama’s 2002 Governor

By Carl Chapik ⋅ January 18, 2008 ⋅ Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Electronic voting machines manufactured by Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) lost over six thousand three hundred votes in the 2002 general elections in Alabama. Sometime after the polls had closed and well after elections workers had gone home, the optical scan machines used to tally the vote in the gubernatorial race lost the votes which were all cast for Don Siegelman, the Democratic candidate for governor. The total of the lost votes was almost twice the margin by which Republican Bob Riley was ultimately declared the winner. Riley won by about three thousand two hundred votes. Siegelman demanded a recount, but Alabama has no provision by which an automatic recount is done when elections are decided by close margins. Instead, recounts in Alabama must be funded by a voter-approved bond. Siegelman was denied his recount and Bob Riley became Alabama’s governor.

Months after ES&S’s electronic voting machines flipped the Alabama election for the Republican Bob Riley, a spokesman for the company admitted that “something happened” with his company’s machinery, but that he did not have “enough intelligence” to say exactly what it was.

Bob Riley is still governor of Alabama.

Don Siegelman is currently in prison for racketeering, but just because he is a fraud and criminally greedy, it doesn’t mean he didn’t win the 2002 election. Of course, some people think Siegelman was torpedoed by Turd Blossom Rove. Most of the time when people think Turd Blossom has been up to no good, he has been up to no good. So, there’s a good chance that Don Siegelman isn’t even as guilty as the law thinks he is.