So there's this video of a voting machine that selects Romney when you try to
click on Obama.
To someone who has had some experience with touch screen technology, it looks
like the touch system is just out of sync with the UI, which could be fixed by
re-calibrating the system. According to the uploader, it is not a calibration
issue, because they tried tapping other names and they all worked fine. You can
find the uploader's comments in the description of the video. I have no reason
to doubt the uploader's sincerity, since according to Mother Jones the
machine was actually taken out of service and "recalibrated." So the video is
(probably) not fake.
A lot of people are now assuming this was done intentionally to steal votes from
Obama in favor of Romney. The mainstream media is picking up on the story as
well. The problem with this belief is that if someone did intentionally make the
voting machine behave this way, they could have done something far worse. They
could have made the system swap the votes invisibly, behind-the-scenes, so that
nobody ever notices.
If it was done intentionally, and whoever did it could have made the machine
swap votes invisibly, then you have to ask the question: Why did they make it
visible? Certainly if a lot of these machines started doing what is seen in
the video, a lot of people would notice, and it would be clear that there was
some kind of fraud was going on. The election results would clearly be invalid.
A lot of vote-altering machines would invalidate the election, but just one is
enough to make everyone panic and to get the story covered by the popular news
media, giving Romney some potentially bad publicity. So a possibly better
explanation, if it was intentional, is that it was done by a supporter of one of
the other candidates.
Or, it could just be a bug. I think it is.