It's election night,
and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then,
mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's
campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge
that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at
computers with access to the vote-tabulating software. When the count
resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an
investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election
officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could
shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.
This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election
in Riverside County, reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper
The Independent. [more]