New Culprit: Triad Voting Machines

Both truthout and Raw Story have articles today focusing on problems with Triad and their punchcard voting machines, which have been ignored with all the publicity that Diebold and others have received.

In the truthout piece, Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed, it's reported that Triad is owned by Tod Rapp, a donor to both the Republican Party and the Bush election campaign. Besides manufacturing punch-card voting systems, Triad wrote the computer program that tallied the punch-card votes cast in 41 Ohio counties in November.

It goes on to provide testimony about very suspicious behavior by a Triad representative that was given by Green Party candidate, David Cobb, when he testified at the Conyers hearing held in Columbus. It relays what is called by Cobb a "shocking incident" in which the Triad rep takes apart a voting machine at an Ohio county board of elections office on December 10th and more. The source of Cobb's story has been identified as  Sherole Eaton, Hocking County deputy director of elections. The text of an affidavit signed by Eaton is included in the truthout story.

In response, Rep. John Conyers has asked the FBI and a county prosecutor in Ohio today to explore "inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering" in at least one and perhaps several Ohio counties. The truthout piece includes a copy of Conyer's letter.

The Raw Story article reports that "The lawyers for Green presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, along with Kerry-Edwards 200, have added election tampering to a civil suit filed against the state of Ohio over problems with the state's recount."

This piece also features an affidavit included with the Cobb-Badnarik-Kerry filing by Professor of Computer Science Douglas Jones. Jones asserts that Triad Election Systems' visits to local Boards of Election "compromise the credibility and integrity of the Ohio recount." There's also a copy of the complete civil suit provided.

I think that both of these articles are well worth a read. Just when you think things can't get any stranger in terms of the 2004 election, they gets stranger.

(Thanks to Ron for the heads-up on these.)