When Max Himsl opened his electronic ballot on Friday, he was dismayed to see a candidate missing from the list of options.
Voting absentee electronically while living abroad, Himsl saw that under the options for president, only Republican Donald Trump and Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were listed. Missing was Democrat Kamala Harris.
“I’m upset my democratic process was interrupted,” he said.
Election officials were notified of the error shortly after the Electronic Absentee System that allows certain voters to cast their ballot electronically went live on Friday at 8 a.m., according to the Montana Secretary of State’s Office which reported that the error was isolated to the online system.
Trying to use the Principal of Charity, it was probably just that one or more counties pushed a version of the form out from after the Republican convention, but before the Democratic one.
I’m fairly confident that if it was done with malice, they’ll figure it out in short order and handle it accordingly. Despite what Republicans want to think, there are a good number of fraud protections built into the system…if there weren’t, it would be easier and more effective for Ryssia/China/Iran/whoever else to directly hack the system than to spend the time and money paying people to shitpost devisive political garbage for months leading up to the election.