This just in: a catastrophic miscarriage of justice took place in the South Bronx when tens of thousands of votes went uncounted in the 2010 Senate and Governor's election, but luckily South Bronx is full of Poors and also everyone knew who was going to win anyway. This came to light when the radio station WNYC reported in 2011 that tens of thousands of votes had been lost in the 2010 races for both Senate seats and and the Governor's mansion. In response to the very serious problem of the losing of 30% of votes cast, the state Board of Election and the electronic voting machines’ manufacturer ES&S ( née Diebold ) assembled a crack team of experts to figure out what went wrong. According to WNYC :
There’s some kind of defect in these machines that when they overheat they can create what they’re calling phantom votes,” said Larry Norden, a deputy director with the Brennan Center.
Ah yes, the old "some kind of defect." That explains everything . The appropriate course of action to remedy this defect, of course, is to replace the broken machine with another broken machine exactly like it, which should solve everything forever . And also to tell people that their vote doesn't count anyway so not to worry about it.
“One of the fortunate things about this problem in the South Bronx was that, where those machines were used, there were no close elections so it didn’t have an impact, but there’s no question that, in a close election, it would," Norden said.
For the record, your Wonkette was never actually worried for a minute that voting would have an impact.
Yeah, the "overheating" excuse sounds like it was cooked up by someone who doesn't understand much about digital hardware. This is roughly equivalent to "Sometimes my DVD player overheats and shows an entirely different movie".
In Brooklyn the machines themselves were probably stolen!