Update on Romney family's Ohio voting machines

In fact, MSNBC's Ed Schultz did address the reports referenced in this afternoon's post that the Romney family is closely connected with ownership of voting machines, some of which will be used in Ohio on November 6th.  Schultz brought it up while interviewing a strongly progressive Ohio State Senator, Nina Turner.   

Responding to Schultz's question about the report, Turner said she thought the Romney connection to the machines was tenuous and  circuitous, and to her mind it is not a worrisome threat.  She said she trusts the ability of the bipartisan board overseeing the machines to make sure the machines work properly.  

Given the still-unanswered questions about Ohio vote-counting in 2004, I thought that she sounded overly confident.  However, this African-American senator has been a fireball on the subject of voter suppression and the legal battle over early voting, so she's not naive about the Repubicans' intention to stage anything but a fair fight in November. 

Senator Turner is infinitely better versed in matters of election administration in Ohio than I am, that I know for certain.  At the same time, while I found her lack of unease reassuring, we can also be certain that there will be close monitoring to see that there are not once again the kind of extraordinary divergences between exit poll data and vote tabs in Ohio Ohio Ohio that were the hallmark of Florida Florida Florida.  

More than 100,000 people died in Iraq because of one questionable vote count in one state.  After that, I will not regret taking the risk of overstating a threat to the integrity of this coming election.  Whether I actually did so still remains to be seen.  Not that I hope for problems; I hope that we all have full confidence in the accuracy of the count come November 7th. 

In other words, the best outcome for democracy itself is that Obama wins Ohio so we can move forward as a nation that need not be haunted by this question!