Rigged Election Day? GOP Politician Cites Dozens Of Reports Of ‘Rigged’ Machines Changing Votes

They say it’s not who votes that counts but who counts the votes, and one Virginia Republican is claiming that the machines counting votes in that state’s elections are rigged. Plus, he says he’s got the documentation to prove it.

As Americans head to the polls on Election Day, the Huffington Post reports that Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) is already calling into question the validity of the vote. Rigell’s complaint: polling machines in almost two dozen locations are switching the votes for Virginians that intended to vote Republican.

“We know it’s going to grow through the day,” Rigell told the press. “That is not an anomaly, that’s a pattern, in each and every case it’s going against us and in favor of our challenger.”

Rigell’s challenger is Democrat Suzanne Patrick, who is hoping that her bona fides as a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves can help her unseat Rigel as the representative for Virginia’s 2nd District.

Rigell says that 25 people from 19 precincts across the district have reported vote switching on polling machines. What’s more, the Republican Party of Virginia has contacted the state Department of Elections, saying that the vote switching problems Rigell is reporting aren’t just limited to the 2nd District.

“Voters have difficulty selecting the candidate of their choice using the touch screen,” the letter reads, “because the screen’s touch sensor is not properly aligned with the text that appears on the screen.”

State officials aren’t quite convinced that any vote switching skullduggery is afoot. They say the problem is overblown and that the Registrar takes malfunctioning machines out of circulation when they are discovered.

“To be honest with you,” said Virginia Beach Voter Registrar Donna Patterson, “we’ve had more calls from Rigell’s office than from voters.”

Ever since electronic vote machines first began to appear in polling stations, fears have loomed over the possibility that the machines could be hacked to switch votes. The issue pops up most prominently during presidential elections but it has definitely reared its head in midterm elections as well.

The fear of rigged voting machines isn’t exclusive to Republicans, either. Back in 2004, liberals and Democrats expressed concern over statements from the CEO of Diebold, the company that supplied voting machines for the crucial swing state of Ohio.

“I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to [President Bush],” the Diebold exec said that year, setting off a wave of conspiracy theories claiming that the Bush administration had rigged the vote in Ohio.

Voter fraud and vote switching have been in the news quite a bit this year, with one video appearing last week that seems to show a rigged voting machine in Illinois repeatedly switching a vote from the Republican candidate to the Democratic candidate. Numerous other reports also appear to show vote shenanigans, though no hard evidence of a true vote switching conspiracy has emerged.