Diebold screwing it up even more?

I just yanked this off of a POAC link:

Berkeley Daily Planet
How Many Diebolds to Screw Up an Election?
By PETER TEICHNER

Call me stolen-elections-hypersensitive (see 2000, then 2004) but something happened last week that perked up my vote fraud antenna and makes me wonder why no one else I know of has picked up on it.

Two articles early last week, one by the Associated Press and one online by Guy Ashley of the Contra Costa Times, reported similar failure rates for Diebold AccuVote TSX voting machines equipped with printers during certification tests held in Stockton in late July.

On Saturday July 30, an Associated Press article stated that they had a failure rate of 10 percent and “Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said that was too high a risk and he notified company officials in a letter sent Wednesday.”

A few days later an online Contra Costa Times article by Guy Ashley reported that “McPherson said that Diebold machines showed a failure

rate of about 10 percent in the tests, due mostly to unexpected screen freezes and paper jams.”

But then on Wednesday Aug. 3, the Contra Costa Times reported that “Officials in McPherson’s office said 19 of 96 machines tested encountered problems including paper jams and screen freezes… ..” By my reckoning, 19 out of 96 constitutes about a 20 percent failure rate–double the 10 percent originally reported by Secretary of State McPherson and his office.

When I inquired about this of Times reporter Guy Ashley, he confirmed the numbers for me. He explained in an e-mail to me that he was told (presumably by an Alameda County official) that the 10 percent figure cited by AP was low and he should check with secretary of state’s office. He did and was told that 19 of 96 computers used in the testing did have problems.

I find it hard to believe that the Secretary of State McPherson, who happens to be a Republican, or his office would inadvertently fail to report accurately on this critically important voting rights issue which is all about accuracy of the vote count.

…snip

Peter Teichner is a Berkeley resident.

Go and read the rest… What more can I say? It ain’t ever pretty when Diebold rears it’s ugly head.