Ann Coulter misleads on Diebold

Ann Coulter's column last week was titled "Historic victory for Diebold!" She claims that "For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated."

Just because the election wasn't clearly rigged doesn't mean that Diebold has been remotely vindicated, and the 2006 election continued to produce evidence that Diebold e-voting machines should not be used.

As Brad Friedman points out at the Huffington Post, there were major problems with electronic voting machines in Denver, as well as problems opening the polls on time in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio. Problems with early voting using electronic voting machines occurred in Florida, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, and California. The Electronic Frontier Foundation received about 17,000 complaints by 8 p.m. on election day; Common Cause received 14,000 by 4 p.m. John Gideon of VotersUnite.org put together a searchable database of reported election problems.

Bruce Schneier also gives a recap of electronic voting machine problems at his blog, with Florida's 13th District presenting the biggest issues, where 18,000 votes apparently disappeared in a race where a difference of 386 votes decided the outcome (described in a separate post).

The outcome of the election doesn't change any of the existing data about the problems with Diebold voting machines.

As usual, Coulter gets it all wrong. When it comes to voting, she should worry more about her own problems than comment on a controversy where she's clearly completely ignorant.