4503 Electronic Votes Lost in NC

ctnp writes "While it wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome, 4530 votes were lost in one North Carolina county after one machine was configured to store 3,005 votes instead of the expected 10,500. 'The machines flash a warning message when there is no more room for storing ballots. 'Evidently, this message was either ignored or overlooked,' he [Jack Gerbel, CEO of machine-providing UniLect] wrote.'"

Shock!

[rueger]

Hold on! You're surely not suggesting that those modern electronic computer machines might not work properly!

No, this must be the sneaky terrorist attack on democracy that Bin Laden promised last week!

Re:Happened in florida

[cgenman]

Why would you ever use a signed int in a voting machine? Obviously they should have used a much larger available counting variable, but how could someone writing the code think "Eh, maybe we'll need negatives"?

Now that's incompetence you can count on.

Well this stuff is gonna continue.

[infonography]

I saw a pic of ballots being loaded into a truck with a Bush 2004 sticker on the back.

In other news, I talked to a guy on the internets that heard from someone else that there was a website that had a 2nd hand account of really nasty about what's his name. And when they went back the site was mysteriously gone.

Wait there, I think there is helicoptor above my house.

Time passes.

I heard it and it was too dark to see, guess it must have been one of those black helicopters.

You know what Stuart? I like you. You're not like the other people here
in the trailer park. Oh no, don't get me wrong, they're fine people, good
Americans. But they're content to sit back, maybe watch a little Mork and
Mindy on channel 57. Maybe kick back a cool Coors 16-ouncer. They're
good fine people, Stuart. But they don't know what the queers are doing
to the soil.

You know that Johnny Werzner kid - the kid who delivers papers in the
neighborhood? He's a fine kid. Some of the neighbors say he smokes
crack, but I don't believe it. Anyway, for his 10th birthday, all he
wanted was a burrow owl, just like his old man. "Dad, get me a burrow
owl. I'll never ask for anything else as long as I live". So the guy
breaks down and buys him a burrow owl. Anyway at 10:30 the other night I
go out into my yard and there's the Werzner kid looking up in the tree. I
said, "What are you looking for?" He said, "I'm looking for my burrow
owl." I say, "Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! Everybody knows that a
burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground! Why the hell do you think they
call it a burrow owl, anyway?!" Now Stuart, do you think a kid like that
is gonna know what the queers are doing to the soil?

I first became aware of this, about 10 years ago, the summer my oldest boy
Bill Jr. died. You know that carnival that comes to town every year?
Well this year it came with a ride called the Mixer. The man said "Keep
your head and arms inside the mixer at all times." But Bill Jr., he was a
daredevil, just like his old man. He was leaning out saying, "Hey
everybody! Look at me, look at me!" POW! He was decapitated. They found
his head over by the snowcone concession. A few days after that, I open
up the mail and there's a pamphlet in there, from Pueblo, Colorado. And
it's addressed to Bill Jr. And it's entitled, "Do you know what the
queers are doing to our soil?"

Now Stuart, if you look at the soil around any large U.S. city with a big
underground homosexual population - Des Moines, Iowa, perfect example.
Look at the soil around Des Moines, Stuart. You can't build on it, you
can't grow anything in it. The government says it's due to poor farming.
But I know what's really going on, Stuart. I know it's the queers.
They're in it with the aliens. They're building landing strips for gay
Martians. I swear to God.

You know what Stuart, I like you. You're not like the other people, here
in the trailer park.

Thanks to the Dead Milkmen, And since you read this all the way to the end, I should mention I am pro-kerry. It's over folks, they won this round.

Re:Happened in florida

[dtfinch]

This begs a much bigger question:

How in the hell did one voting machine take over 32000 votes? Suppose they had a 16 hour window to vote, that would mean it averaged less than 2 seconds per vote.

Also, (short)32767+1=-32768. They shouldn't see it count backwards unless it displayed the absolute value in addition. Did the programmer for some silly reason anticipate negative values and stick an abs() in there? Or did they reinvent some wheels and write their own itoa()? No matter how it happened, wow, what amazing stupidity and/or malice.

A deeper problem?

[xenocide2]

Everyone was afraid of what would happen if things went blatantly wrong. We appear to have avoided that malady. But there was always the question, how will we know if they've tampered with it? The answer was a meek "Well, the exit polls will keep the ballots true."

And today we see the exit polls distinctly differing from the actual counts, and collectively sigh that our nation won't go through the same disaster it did four years ago. If we can't trust the exit polls, why can we trust the voting machines?

Re:The truth is: It doesn't matter.

[EzInKy]

Religious morons in the hick states...

Hmmm...the Republicans called those religious "morons" their friends. Yep, that's why we lost all right.

Re:It gets worse.

[geminidomino]

Think of the message being sent by insisting that Christians understand the Muslim world while at the same time telling them that they must compromise their fundamental Christian beliefs.

Who ASKED them to compromise their beliefs? Letting gays marry doesn't FORCE them to take it in the back door. No one's FORCING them to have SAFE sex or have abortions.

No, the Xians are being asked to get their thrice-damned noses OUT of everyone else's business. No more than that.