26,000 total Tickets sold - 14,302 votes tabulated

According to DerekLarsson over at BradBlog,

There were 26,000 total Tickets sold for this event, yet there were only just 14,302 votes tabulated.

Now think about that for a minute.
26,000 people purchase tickets to go to a Straw Poll event, and yet we are to believe that 12,000 of those people couldn’t even care less about the voting part? Just what were they there for?

I don't buy it. This is not believable.
An Investigation is needed here.

I think what happened is that the Diebold E-Voting machines threw away votes --- as we also saw last year with the 2006 Florida-13 race and the NC-08 race (hurting the more liberal candidate in each race) --
And, these machines most likely threw away the votes that were intended for only the anti-Iraq, anti-War, anti-Central-Bank-monopoly, anti-Patriot-Act, anti-Empire candidate in the race, Ron Paul.

We all know that Ron Paul had a huge very visible and very vocal crowd of supporters there at the event, that were perhaps equal in number to, or at least in the same ballpark as Mitt Romney.

So, if, for example, the machine only registered 1 out of every 4 Ron Paul votes --- for Ron Paul himself --- and then threw the rest out, that would explain his much lighter than expected 1,300 vote total, and also explain some of the huge gap between ticket buyers (26,000) and the total people recognized as having voted (14,000) in the event.

Of course, it could even be worse than this (even more Ron Paul voters votes thrown away), thus robbing Paul of an outright victory in the Straw Poll.

I cannot prove that this specifically is what happened.
But the point is that, without a open, transparent, inspectible, verifiable (in real-time) voting environment, which is a requirement for any Democracy, we will never know here.

I know this, 26,000 get tickets to an voting event, and only 14,302 bother to vote-?? That dog don't hunt!
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4946#comment-248645

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Diebold Distributor Tells BRAD BLOG 'You Are Totally Full of Shit'
Comments That We Are 'Deluded,' 'Paranoid,' 'Looney Idealogues,' and that Voting Machines Are Not the 'Cause of Our Problems, It's the People'
Challenges Us to a Debate...We Accept...

Blogged by Brad Friedman from the Ozark Mountains in Missouri...

In a late comment posted just this morning, in reply to the article and photos about my recent visit to Diebold in Texas, a person claiming to be an employee of one of Diebold's New England distributors believes I am "totally full of shit"...
COMMENT #29 [Permalink]
... Ken Hajjar said on 8/10/2007 @ 7:30 am PT...

Dear Brad, you are totally full of shit. I used to think that all of the looney idealogues were on the right. There are just as many on the left and you are one of them. You have no idea how elections are conducted and how many safeguards are in place, including human oversight. But, facts don't matter to ideologues, so I'm probably wasting my time. To think that many of your paranoid fellow travellers would actually think that the hand counting of paper ballots is nirvana just shows how deluded you and they are. I work for LHS Associates in New England. We are distributors for Diebold and while I have many reasons to criticize things that the company has done over the past few years, the thought that there is a company wide culture of fraud and deception is ludicrous. But, as I said, facts don't matter to you. Stop blaming the vendors and look to the incompetence and cowardice of the Democratic party for its failures. Couple that with the criminal activities of the GOP relative to vote suppression and you've got your answers. It's not the machines that are the cause of our problems, it's the people. I challenged Bev Harris and Harri Hursti a couple of years ago and they backed off. I issue the same challenge to you. Pick a forum and I'd be happy to discuss how we run elections in New England and how difficult, if not impossible it is to game the system. Bring it on.

I don't know Mr. Hajjar, nor his company, LHS Associates, and don't have much time again today, as I'm still on the road, to look into them, but I'll presume both are legitimate entities and he is the one who posted the above comment. Hajjar, according to LHS's website, appears to be their "Director of Sales and Marketing," so it's little wonder he's a bit deluded about the products his company represents and upon which his livelihood depends. It makes sense that he might be a tad paranoid about what may come in the wake of recent devastating findings out of California concerning Diebold and their shitty, hackable voting systems, as far as his continuing ability to make a living off them courtesy of the tax-payer teat.

Nonetheless, I am happy to reply to a point or two of his silly, ill-conceived screed, along with gladly accepting his invitation to debate these particular issues publicly...
http://www.bradblog.com/