It Wasn't Fraud, It Was a Typical Voting Pattern

A local political gadfly, best known for her pursuit of Obama over the birth certificate issue, ran for Senate on the crowded open primary ballot and finished well out of the running.  She's making allegations of fraud involving the voting machines, but the reasons incumbents keep getting elected is not that hard to understand (from the Mission Viejo Patch):

Writing on her blog Wednesday morning, the Orange County resident said: "At the moment nobody has a clue how these machines are programmed. There is a high probability that different values were given to votes cast for different candidates."

Before the election, Taitz told Patch she suspected widespread voter fraud was responsible for the nation's high incumbency rate.

"How can it be that the members of Congress, which have an approval rating of 9 to 11 percent, can be reelected on average 90 percent of the time?" she said. "Something is very wrong with this system."

Something is wrong with the system, but it's not fraud. When voters are surveyed about Congress they generally give the institution very low ratings. However, when you ask them how they feel about THEIR congressman, the ratings are usually significantly higher. People don't like Congress as a whole, but are generally much more charitable to the only member of Congress for whom they can actually vote.

Although I saw some signs for Taitz around the area, I didn't see any TV ads or hear any radio ads for her.  Although she has some name recognition for her Birther stuff, it wasn't going to be enough to place 1st or 2nd in a statewide primary.

There's nothing wrong with the voting machines.  It's just the voters.