Voter Fraud 2012: LIVE Vote Fraud, Intimidation, Busted Voting Machines, and Other Election Day Fiascoes

Once again, it's Election Day, and that means no shortage of allegations of voter fraud, voter intimidation, broken voting machines, and other electoral malpractice. Whether it's African-Americans being denied the right to vote in Florida in 2000, or members of the New Black Panther Party standing outside polling stations with billy clubs in 2008, whichever side loses will have some fodder for explaining the reasons why their side lost the 2012 presidential election. PolicyMic has this election covered coast-to-coast, so stay tuned for live updates on the latest Election Day voting issues.  

4:30pm: Thirty minutes before the unsealing of exit polling data. Hang in there, folks. 

4:25pm: A Philadelphia judge has ordered an Obama mural at a Philadelphia school doubling as at polling station has been ordered covered:

3:53pm: Exclusive video of Springfield resident Homer Simpson having serious issues with an electronic voting machine in his precinct:

3:41pm: According to NBC Bay Area, more than 25,000 dead people are still on the voter rolls in California:

"A closer look at the data revealed that some of the dead people were not only registered, but somehow, even voted, several years after their death. Sometimes, clerks say the mistake can purely be a clerical error, such as a misplaced signature or an outdated registration list that hadn't been purged. Other times, though, the voting turns out to be fraud, clerks say, where family members vote on their dead relatives' behalf."

2:53pm: From the Nation, three major voting issues thus far:

Problem #1: Problems with voting in states hit by Hurricane Sandy, particularly in New Jersey and New York. In New Jersey, for example, servers set up to handle ballots sent via e-mail have crashed due to volume. People affected by the storm don’t know where to go to vote. Polling places are not open, or not staffed, or the voting machines aren’t working. The highest concentration of calls to the 1-866-Our-Vote hotline is coming from New Jersey.

Problem #2: Poll workers in Pennsylvania wrongly telling voters they need photo ID to cast a ballot. According to the law, poll workers in Pennsylvania can ask voters for ID, but they are not required to show it in order to vote. However, that is not how the law is being enforced. Eric Marshall, co-director of Election Protection, says such problems are occurring across the state, although reports are that minority voters are being targeted in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. “Poll workers are asking black voters for ID but not white voters,” Marshall reported.

Problem #3: Voting machines are not working in the Ohio cities of Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo. The optical scan electronic voting machines are broken. These are heavily Democratic cities where Obama needs a big turnout to win.

3:14pm: Fox News objects to Obama mural at polling station at Philadelphia school:

2:43pm: From PolicyMic's own Steven Robert Morse, who filmed the infamous 2008 video of members of the New Black Panther Party hanging outside a Philadelphia polling station. Fox News played the video ad nauseam. Morse calls the Fox News hype "a total fabrication."

2:11pm: Footage of this electronic voting machine turning a vote for Obama into a vote for Romney in Pennsylvania legit? MSNBC has confirmed that the machine featured below has been taken out of service.

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Live Election Day Updates here

Monday, 10:16pm: Courtesy of MediaMatters, the number of minutes the three major cable news networks dedicated to presidential candidate speeches.

Monday, 9:29pm: The Huffington Post is reporting that last week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie turned down a request by the Romney campaign to appear with the GOP nominee at a rally in Morrisville, Pennsylvania. According to an anonymous Romney campaign aide: "You can't tell me he couldn't have gone over there for a night rally."

Monday, 7:56pm: The polling data among independents pre- and post-Sandy could signal major trouble for Romney:

Obama's response to Hurricane Sandy was praised across the political spectrum, with New Jersey governor and Romney surrogate Chris Christie calling Obama's handling of the situation, "outstanding." The response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency was in stark contrast to that of the Bush administration's to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. 

Monday 7:36pm: Contrary to earlier predictions about evangelicals being reluctant to vote for a Mormon for president, they are mobilizing to defeat Obama. While many Americans know very little about Mormonism, it will suffice to say this: Before the Church of Latter Day Saints outlawed polygamy in 1890, Mormonism was the belief that it is better for a man to have six wives than one beer. 

Monday, 6:44pm: For what it's worth, InTrade pegs Obama's reelection chances at 68% as of this moment. 

Monday, 5:45pm: The way I see it, Obama will defeat Romney 290 to 248. Realistically, there are several ways Obama can win, while the most likely path to a Romney victory entails the Republican winning Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and one other swing state, such as Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, or New Hampshire. It is entirely conceivable that Romney wins the popular vote, but loses the Electoral College, but I am predicting that Obama will win both.

Monday, 5:25pm: Control of the House and Senate will likely remain unchanged, with the former staying in the GOP's control and the latter being held by the Democrats. So whoever wins the presidency will likely be dealing with a divided Congress and more partisan gridlock. Americans should prepare themselves for the 113th Congress to be as ineffectual at passing legislation as the 112th has been — at least until the 2014 midterm elections.

Monday, 5:04pm: Bill Clinton has recorded a robocall for Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts. Warren is running against Senator Scott Brown, a moderate Republican representing one of the most liberal states in the union.

Monday, 4:28pm: The Onion is out with an exclusive report that could be an Election Day game-changer, and swing the race in Mitt Romney's favor:

Monday, 3:38pm: Courtesy of MSNBC, here are the results so far among early voters from across the country. Romney leads in the popular vote total, but Obama would still have the upper hand in the Electoral College.

Monday, 3:27pm: By the way, there's a super exciting U.S. Senate here in New York that no one is talking about! The latest polls show Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D) and Wendy Long (R) locked in a bizarro dead heat:

The size of the lead can hardly be surprising in this, one of the bluest states in the nation. For instance, neither Barack Obama or Mitt Romney campaign here, but they both have spent lots of time fundraising here. For all intents and purposes, unless you're a New Yorker with a large campaign donation in one hand, you'll likely never get the opportunity to shake a presidential candidate's hand with the other. Damn you, Electoral College!

Au revoir, Wendy Long(shot).

Monday, 2:31pm: Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, who appears to have succeeded Ron Paul as the national torchbearer for libertarianism, told Politico that he thinks Obama will win:

“I think Obama’s going to win, that’s what I think,” Johnson told POLITICO in an interview. “[My vote is] really spread out, meaning I don’t think there’s any state that I’m going to do better than another.”

Monday, 2:18pm: Electoral vote map flashback to 2000:

If Al Gore's campaign had directed more resources into New Hampshire instead of Ohio, the Election Day fiasco in Florida might have been a mere sideshow in the most controversial election in generations. If the Granite State had gone for Gore, the electoral vote count would be flipped, and Gore would have won the presidency, in addition to the popular vote. Instead, he lost the state by two percentage points, and became the first candidate since Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to win the popular vote, but lose in the Electoral College.

Monday, 2:11pm: Barack Obama was in Madison, Wisconsin earlier today speaking at a campaign rally, sounding slightly hoarse. He told the crowd, "We have come too far to turn back now." 

Monday, 1:50pm: According to a Howey/Depauw University poll, Joe Donnelly (D) leads Richard Mourdock (R) 47% to 36% in the U.S. Senate race in Indiana. It was the first bipartisan poll taken since Mourdock claimed in the final debate that when women conceive as a result of rape, God intendedthe pregnancy to happen. Therefore, Mourdock said, he does not support a rape exception on the issue of abortion. 

Monday, 1:27pm: The latest poll in the closely watched Massachusetts Senate race between Senator Scott Brown (R) and Elizabeth Warren (D) has Brown leading by one point. The UMass Lowell/Boston Herald survey appears to have come out of left field, as the previous three showed Warren ahead by six, four, and seven points.

This is the second most expensive Senate race in the country, with the two sides spending nearly $68 million combined through October. Brown is the most vulnerable Republican incumbent, which is not surprising in very blue state. Brown was elected in a special election in 2010, defeated Attorney General Martha Coakley and her hapless campaign. Warren, however, has been a much stronger candidate, and the higher turnout that comes in presidential election years should boost Warren here, where Obama will trounce Romney by double digits, even though Romney was governor of the state for four years.

Monday, 12:46pm: Early voting in Florida has turned into a fiasco, as some voters have waited at least six hours to vote. According to the Huffington Post, 

"They didn't have the infrastructure," filmmaker Lucas Leyva, who was among those turned away, told The Huffington Post's Janie Campbell. "We read the press release and everything that went out this morning, promising we'd be able to get absentee ballots and vote. We got here and there was a line of hundreds of people all being told the same thing, that that wasn't true anymore. You could drop off [a ballot], but they could not issue one."

And if getting turned away from the polls weren't enough of an indignity, some of those 180 people ended up getting their cars towed from the parking lot across the street, according to a Miami Herald reporter.

Given that this is occuring in Democratic-leaning areas, and also the fact that Republican Governor Rick Scott has refused to extend early voting hours, a Romney win in Florida and the general election could mean a major controversy, a la Florida in the 2000 presidential election.

Monday, 11:42am: Everyone is talking about the Washington Redskins' home loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday because of the implications of the so-called "Redskins Rule." With the exception of 2004, in every presidential election since 1940, if the Redskins lose their last home game before the presidential election it has meant a victory for the non-incumbent party. On the other hand, a Redskins victory at home has meant the incumbent party has kept the White House. If this "rule" holds, Romney will become the 45th president. However, as I project below, no amount of voodoo NFL magic can save Romney's candidacy.