A local leader of the conservative Constitution Party told the Raleigh County Commission on Tuesday it needed to re-evaluate the touch screen voting machines currently used in elections because the machines are flawed.

The machines were approved by Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, and her office recently forked out about $500,000 for the machines. In addition, the county threw in about $400,000 on the purchase of the voting machines.

Gene Stalnaker of Daniels says even though other West Virginia counties continue to use the machines to tabulate votes despite claims they’re defective, Raleigh County deserves better.

Voters in Jackson and Taylor counties told a legislative interim subcommittee Sept. 14 the machines switched votes from one candidate to another in several races during 2008 balloting.

State media organizations reported voters in Putnam, Berkeley, Ohio, Monongalia and Greenbrier counties also complained about the machines “flipping” votes during the 2008 elections, often from Democrat to Republican.

Ohio, Florida and California have stopped using the machines altogether.

“People are fed up to the point of not even going to vote,” Stalnaker told the commission.

“I urge you to reconsider and hold a special meeting, as per West Virginia Code, and vote out the machines and save the cost of an election. It’s up to you all as our elected representatives to look at all of these things and go with the best thing,” Stalnaker added.

Commissioner John Aliff told Stalnaker, “I feel like right now the best thing is the voting machine. It’s been much more fair and superior to any method we’ve had so far. I feel good about it.”

Raleigh County Administrator Dennis Sizemore said, out of Raleigh County’s 57,000 registered voters, he’s only received one complaint in regard to the electronic machines.

One complaint “is not a problem,” Sizemore said.

“We’ve got over $1 million invested in this equipment. Are we just going to tell the taxpayers we’re throwing it out,” he asked.

Stalnaker replied, “You bought the wrong thing.”

Sizemore says Raleigh County bought what the secretary of state and Congress approved.

At a previous commission meeting, Stalnaker presented the commission a copy of the Ohio Project EVEREST voting study.

According to the study, the voting machines are intrinsically flawed.

Due to several flaws, the report alleges, hackers can control the outcome of the entire election due to errors in input processing, poll workers can easily extract or alter the memory of the machines and a voter in a single precinct can corrupt the software to impact the outcome when provisioning a subsequent election.