Mecklenburg Board of Elections

Unless you've been in seclusion or you've been living under a rock, you've heard about the alarmingly high undervote rate in Florida's 13th Congressional District race. According to The San Francisco Chronicle piece linked above via CommonDreams, the undervote of somewhere around 15% in Sarasota County means that close to 18,000 people voted for other races, but failed to select a choice for the Jennings/Buchanan race. Unlike North Carolina, Florida does not require a paper trail for its touch screen machines. There are several theories floating around as to what happened to those 18,000 votes, but with no paper trail, it is difficult, if not impossible to verify the count from the machine.

Now, conspiracy theories are cropping up surrounding the 4.2% Mecklenburg County undervote in the 8th Congressional race between Larry Kissell and Robin Hayes. It started with an email going around with lots of THESE and quite a few of !!!!!!! these. According to the author of the email the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections was negligent in its execution of the 3% eye-hand recount performed on November 29, 2006. The author also claims that there is an unprecedented undervote in Mecklenburg County for the 8th Congressional District race. The undervote rate of 4.2% is unprecedented in this race for Mecklenburg County, however, in light of circumstances surrounding November's elections, it is not surprising, shocking or significant and all the CAPITAL LETTERS and !!!!! exclamation points!!!! in the world will not change that fact.

Grab a cuppa and get comfy. This one's looooong....