More McKinney

by Cliopatria

The website of Cynthia McKinney, unexpectedly facing a runoff election in Georgia's 4th District, has just posted a bulletin to"Team McKinney" voters:

It's time! Refuse to Lose!
As you know, there will be a runoff election in the 4th District of Georgia on Tuesday August 8th. I will be pitted against a mostly unknown and unproven opponent, who will nonetheless have the unanimous backing of big national media and national money. The media and money behind my opponent will do their utmost to polarize the election along racial and party lines. To win, they must provoke a stampede of Republican voters to the polls on August 8th. To accomplish this, they must and will portray not just my voice, but yours too, as dangerous, unpatriotic and downright loony.

The previous announcement on the website?"One persistent problem with the Diebold electronic voting machines is their tendency to cast votes against the intentions of the voter. The voting day in Cynthia McKinney's primary began with voters complaining that their votes for McKinney weren't being cast for her, but instead for her opponent. Interesting, no complaints have been lodged that this is happening in reverse--that is, that the computers are registering McKinney votes intended for any one of her opponents."

It doesn't take the media to portray McKinney as"downright loony."

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Ben W. Brumfield - 7/21/2006

From what I understand, most of the complaints against the Diebold machines are that the servers, not the votor-facing clients, are easily hacked. Paper receipts are a defense because they allow recounts based on the votes made by the client machines, a "paper trail" independent of the servers themselves.

What I'm getting at is that regardless of the desirability of a paper-receipt system (which I consider obvious), the vulnerability of the Diebold system is silent rigging at the vote-counting level, not something that would be visible to individual voters at the time they cast their ballots.

Jonathan Dresner - 7/20/2006

What was "loony" about McKinney's complaint wasn't that the machines might be problemmatic, but that they were all problemmatic in one direction--part of the great conspiracy against her.

There are growing numbers -- I think, anyway -- of people (including lots of responsible election officials) who believe that machines like the Diebold touch-screen devices are quite vulnerable to hacking and vote-rigging.

If there were substantial complaints by McKinney supporters and none by supporters of other candidates, it's a reasonable inference that the problem might well be one-sided and deliberate. It's not proof, but it's not loony, either.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/20/2006

Yes, but that was one of the problems two years ago in the Democratic primary. She had four or five opponents, two or three of whom were highly qualified. They fractured the opposition and she sneaked over the 50% mark. She seems to be more vulnerable when the opposition can concentrate on supporting a single opposition candidate. Had there not been a conservative white Democrat in the first primary this year, whose only issue was building a wall across Mexico, Johnson might have defeated her flat out.

Robert KC Johnson - 7/20/2006

I quite agree: you can say a lot of things about McKinney, but politically foolish isn't one of them. Her best chance of victory, it seems to me, is to fosteran extreme us-against-the-world mentality. It makes for some odd bedfellows, though: I'm sure Cynthia Tucker got a chuckle out of being cast in with Pres. Bush and the Georgia Republicans.

What was "loony" about McKinney's complaint wasn't that the machines might be problemmatic, but that they were all problemmatic in one direction--part of the great conspiracy against her.

I'm sure a lot of more talented Dems than Johnson wish now that they had jumped into the race.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/20/2006

In fact, there were some complaints on primary day in McKinney's congressional district that some few people who intended to vote for her found that the voting machine was not recording their vote as intended. My impression is that voters noting that problem called it to the attention of poll workers and their vote was then recorded as they intended. Nonetheless, Georgians will continue to have some doubts about the accuracy and security of their Diebold voting machines until they are adjusted to give voters a paper receipt indicating how they voted and a paper trail that can be used if recounts are required.
In the last two years, I was remapped out of McKinney's district, so John Lewis is now my representative, which makes me happy. But you can be sure that, whatever her flaws and I think there are a number of them, Cynthia McKinney is no fool. She's a smart politician who's cultivated a very strong following in her district.