With early voting underway across the country, there have been reports of glitches with one company's electronic voting machines in states across the South:

* In Beaufort County, S.C., voters discovered that some races were missing on the final review screen of the touch-screen voting machines. When they tried to re-cast their ballots, it didn't work again, so they had to cast paper ballots. Affected voter Nancy Roe told the Hilton Head Island Packet:

"I'm real political, so I checked the ballot," she said. "If I had only given it a quick glance and punched 'vote,' I never would've known."

* In Davidson County, Tenn., a woman reported having her vote for Obama flipped to Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, according to a post to the Black Box Voting website:

"A poll worker directed me to a touch screen voting machine & instructed me how to use it. I touched "Obama" for president & nothing lit up. I touched 2 or 3 more times & still nothing lit up. I called the poll worker back over to tell him I was having a problem. He said I just needed to touch it more lightly. I tried it 2 or 3 more times more lightly with the poll worker watching & still nothing lit up. The poll worker then touched it for me twice -- nothing lit up. The third time he touched the Obama button, the Cynthia McKinney space lit up! The McKinney button was located five rows below the Obama button. The poll worker just kind of laughed and cancelled the vote. He hit the Obama button again & it finally lit up.

Coincidentally, the woman who had her vote flipped is the wife of David Earnhardt, the producer and director of "Uncounted" -- a documentary film about problem voting machines.

* In Palo Pinto County, Texas, at least two voters say touch-screen machines kept switching their straight-party votes from Democrat to Republican, the Mineral Wells Index newspaper reported:

"When I cast an early vote [Wednesday] at Palo Pinto County Courthouse, my vote was switched from Democrat to Republican right in front of my face -- twice!" reported Lona Jones, a Precinct 1 county resident.

An elections judge helped her cancel her vote and switched her to another machine. Precinct workers told her that the machines give them problems.

* In West Virginia's Jackson County, voters report that touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates. The Charleston Gazette reported on the experiences of 81-year-old Calvin Thomas:

"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.

"The rest of them were OK, but the machine sent my votes for those top three offices from the Democrat to the Republican," Thomas said.

Deputy Secretary of State Sarah Bailey said her office instructed the county to recalibrate the machines so the finger-touch areas line up with ballot. They sometimes become miscalibrated when they are moved from storage facilities, she explained.

* In West Virginia's Putnam County, voters also say e-voting machines switched their votes from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to Republican John McCain, and from incumbent Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller to GOP opponent Jay Wolfe, according to the Gazette:

Shelba Ketchum, a 69-year-old nurse retired from Thomas Memorial Hospital, described what happened Friday at the Putnam County Courthouse in Winfield.

"I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican," she said. "I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.

"I asked them for a printout of my votes," Ketchum said. "But they said it was in the machine and I could not get it. I did not feel right when I left the courthouse. My son felt the same way."

* Similar vote-switching problems have also been reported in recent weeks in West Virginia's Berkeley, Ohio, Monongalia and Greenbrier counties, according to the paper.

Something that all these locales have in common is the machine involved: the iVotronic (pictured above) manufactured by Election Systems & Software, a Nebraska firm founded by Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel. ES&S is now the world's largest election equipment firm, with more than 170,000 systems installed worldwide -- including about half of the electronic systems used in the United States.

As we reported earlier this year, an in-depth report by an elections watchdog group faulted the ES&S iVotronic for the suspiciously high undervote rate in Sarasota County, Fla. in the Congressional race that Republican Vern Buchanan narrowly won over Democrat Christine Jennings.

There have been other serious problems with ES&S equipment in previous elections. Wharton County, Texas did away with iVotronic machines after the equipment switched votes on state propositions last year. And during the January Republican primary in Horry County, S.C., iVotronic equipment malfunctioned in 80 percent of precincts due to programming problems.

The watchdogs at Black Box Voting encourage people who will be voting on iVotronics and other direct-recording electronic machines to use a cell phone video or video camera to videotape the screen during the whole voting process [please read the important update on this below!]:

It is crucial to capture this on video; it happens often enough that if many people videotape BEFORE spotting vote-flipping, some are likely to catch it. Be discreet, or you may not be allowed to do this.

To find out what kind of voting system your county uses, click here.

UPDATE: It turns out that Black Box Voting's suggestion to videotape the balloting process via DRE equipment could put you on the wrong side of the law in some states, including North Carolina. As the New York Times reported in yesterday's story about what may well be the most recorded election in history, N.C. law says that no one "shall photograph, videotape, or otherwise record the image of a voted official ballot for any purpose not otherwise permitted under law," since the practice could encourage the sale of votes. So before hitting the record button, you might check with elections officials in your state.