Elections in America - one-time supposed the greatest democracy on Earth - are notoriously unfair. This especially applies of course to those involving George Bush. Pretty much everyone has, to put it mildly, at least some qualms about the results of the 2000 presidential elections where the Democrats undoubtedly won the popular vote but failed to get in. Bush's re-election in 2004 seems no less suspicious.

Much of the controversy in recent times surrounds the issue of electronic voting - whether the new computerised machines that records one's vote are reliable and tamper-free enough to put the destiny of the world into their hands. Many see problems with them and several groups (for example [1] or [2]) have been set up to educate and campaign about their problems.

With individual ballot casting rightly being secret, normally the effect of such things aren't the easiest to prove. However a rather stark example of real-life inaccuracy seems to have appeared in the guise of the 2006 Mayoral elections in Arkansas.

Randy Wooten decided to run for mayor in Waldenburg, a small town of just 80 people. Admittedly he was therefore never going to get thousands of votes, but imagine his surprise when after the results were announced his wife came back to give him the bad news that he received no votes at all. None.

Now this seemed especially strange because not only did 8 or 9 people - who may or may not have been compulsive liars of course - tell him they voted for him, but as each citizen is entitled to a vote Randy naturally voted for himself via the electronic voting machine. Even if his nearest and dearest refused to back his valiant efforts, he therefore should have got at least one vote. The fact that none registered at all should be a cause of alarm, if not for this election than for the future of ballot counting as a whole. Especially in elections such as the US presidential one where the winner only tends to win by at most a few percent of the vote, every vote should and must count.

Luckily it sounds like this particular voting machine, unlike some, does have some audit trail that could be followed to help determine what if anything went wrong. Apparently this is not a matter of course though, even in these suspicious circumstances, and the officials have been told they will require a court order to open the machine and check the totals. As yet nothing has been done to the Poorhouse's knowledge, as Wooten decides whether he will file a formal protest.

Perhaps someone's been reading how to steal an election by hacking the vote in rather great detail.