Second Term - A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series Book 1) Read Free Page A

hundred and fifty of them. The large metal machines
were heavy and unwieldy, usually requiring two or more persons to move them.
The City had used them for so long that no one now working in the office knew
how old they actually were. The City had balked at investing in newer electronic
voting machines, one Commissioner arguing that the new machines could be
tampered with, another objecting to the cost.
    The machines were stored
in an expansive basement room. Entry to the voting machine storage room, he
knew from prior experience, was not by magnetic strip card, but instead by a
simple Kulwin brass key, tagged with a label saying ELECTION MACHINES STORAGE.
The trick, he realized, was where did the Clerk keep the key? It wasn’t hanging
on the office key rack. He didn’t find the key in the desks in the office, as he
tried all ten desks, but with no results.
    Where would the Clerk
keep the key? Not an easy question, with no ready answer. Clearly the key
needed to be located, but where was it? Without the key, he knew he was wasting
his time.
    Then, he remembered
where it was. He had previously seen the Clerk upend the BEST DAD EVER coffee
mug on his desk, dumping out an assortment of unused pens and pencils, and
revealing the key. Sure enough. Mike now had access to the basement election
machine storage room. He placed the pens and pencils back in the mug, and
headed to the building’s lower level. He would later regret that he had ever
found the key.
    The key worked, just
as he had prayed it would. Inside the storage room he saw what he knew he would
find, hundreds of ancient voting machines The machines had originally been
manufactured by his former Illinois employer, so he had a passing knowledge as
to how they worked. The company kept one of the devices in its front lobby as a
memento to its beginnings in the election tabulation business. He had often
shown visitors how the voting machine worked, with the voter pulling the
curtain closed and then pulling down small levers on the face of the machine
over the name of the chosen candidates.
     Taking a deep
breath, he grabbed the end handle on the closest machine and slowly managed to
leverage the heavy machine out so he could get into the back of the machine. In
order to avoid the possible loss of the keys to the machines, office policy was
to leave the back door key in each machines’ back door lock.
    Mike confirmed the
serial number he had pulled down on his PC in his office before coming to the
storage room on the end plate of the machine. This machine would be used in the
upcoming election, based on the serial number. He then moved back in front of
the machine and confirmed that the candidate name strips had already been
installed, showing the name of the President in position 1A and that of his
opponent in position 2A. So far, so good, just as it should be. Maybe this
isn’t what I at first thought, he mused, walking around to the back of the
machine. He turned the key and dropped down the access door. Inside the machine
he could see the metal levers used to rotate individual counting tabulation wheels
for each candidate’s position on the machine. Oh my, he thought. That’s not right.
    Looking at the many
counting devices across the back of the machine, he could see that almost all
showed five zeroes on the counter wheel, just as they were supposed to, prior
to an election. With some trepidation, he looked to the end counters, for
ballot positions 1A and 2A, the positions for the two major parties’ candidates
for President of the United States. The counter for position 1A, which was to
tabulate votes for the President, showed:
                                          557
    Glancing down to 2A,
the counter for the President’s Republican opponent, Mike saw:
                                           47
    Well, there you have
it, he thought - voter fraud . This machine would be moved to