Romney-Loving Voting Machine “Recalibrated” and Back Online

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An electronic voting machine in Perry County, Pennsylvania, that changed a President Obama vote to one for Mitt Romney is now back online, after officials received a complaint and recalibrated the machine, Mother Jones has confirmed.

A viral YouTube video posted mid-morning Tuesday by user “centralpavoter” shows someone repeatedly trying to vote for President Obama on a digital touchscreen, and the screen locking in a vote for Mitt Romney instead. The user posted a link to the video on Reddit, writing: “I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said ‘It’s nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.’ and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.”

The user wrote that he had no problem voting for candidate Jill Stein.

MSNBC’s Zachary Roth reported that a Pennsylvania electronic voting machine was taken out of service after the video went up, but Mathew Keeler, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, says the machine is back online again—though he couldn’t confirm whether that rejiggered terminal was the same machine featured in the video.

“There was a single complaint, so they recalibrated the machine, did a test run, and put it back online. We’ve had no complaints since then,” Keeler says. While he couldn’t say for certain that this was the machine that “centralpavoter” attempted to use, he added that “we believe they are probably connected.”

Check out the video here:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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