CAMPAIGN? WHAT CAMPAIGN?

Who cares who the VP candidates are when we have battleground states with election infrastructure like this:

The maker of touch-screen voting machines used in half of Ohio's counties has admitted that its own programming error is to blame for votes being dropped in some counties.

The problem can't be fixed before the Nov. 4 election, so Premier Election Solutions and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner are issuing guidelines to counties for how to avoid the problem.

"We will continue to monitor the situation and provide boards of elections with the instruction and support they need to ensure an orderly and efficient election and an accurate count of Ohioans' votes," Brunner said in a memo released today.

Premier, formerly Diebold Election Systems, initially speculated that the problem was a conflict between its system and anti-virus software.

But in a letter Tuesday to Brunner, Premier President David Byrd admitted that further testing showed a source-code error that can cause votes not to be recorded when memory cards are uploaded to computer servers under certain circumstances.

"We are indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error," Byrd wrote.

Brunner is suing to recover the millions of taxpayer dollars spent to buy Premier touch-screens after she said an investigation this year showed that votes in at least 11 counties had been dropped in recent elections.

Elections workers discovered the missing votes, but not until many hours later in most cases, Brunner said. The malfunction first was discovered in Butler County in April, she said.

Forty-four counties, including Licking and Fairfield in central Ohio, use Premier touch-screens. Franklin County uses touch-screens from a different manufacturer.

Emphasis added.

Note that hated Diebold has changed its name to the benignly positive Premier. We can expect the announcement shortly that similar GOP functionaries like Halliburton will change its name to Good Samaritan, and Blackwater will become Flying Horseman.