Ohio voting "glitch" favored Bush

According to a report by the Associated Press, errors in electronic voting machines in one Ohio precinct gave President Bush an extra 3,893 votes. The machines reported Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democratic Sen. John Kerry's 260; however records show that only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365.

Sean Greene, research director with the nonpartisan Election Reform Information Project, said that while the glitch appeared minor, "that could change if more of these stories start coming out." In one North Carolina county more than 4,500 votes were lost in the election because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did, and in San Francisco a malfunction with custom voting software could delay efforts to declare the winners of four races for county supervisor.

While we are on the subject, it is worth remembering that Diebold Election Systems' CEO Walden O'Dell was a Bush Pioneer who raised more than $600,000 for the Bush/Cheney campaign and promised in 2003 to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to the president next year."

According to Democratic Underground.com, "in EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their [sic] EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error...EVERY STATE that has EVoting, but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5 percent when exit polls are compared to actual results."

Perhaps this one "glitch" wasn't enough to cover the margin of difference. But was this the only "glitch"?