4503 Electronic Votes Lost in NC 165
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.'"
what were they using? (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in NC. Yes, the ballot was long this time, but it still wasn't much data per voter. I don't think there were any votes that would have taken more than three bits (and none more than four) to store the choice.
Even if the entire ballot is stored verbatim per voter, I still don't think it would have amounted to more than one or two k per ballot.
The storage device must be tiny. Or the ballot data must be really inefficiently laid out.
My county uses pen and paper for voting. It's cheap and easy.
Re:Shock! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:what were they using? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now what kind of idiot specifies a system where you can only store 10000 ballots? Assuming each ballot took a full 1k to store, then 10000 ballots are only 10M. Since cameras and phones carry more memory that that these days, it's reasonable to assume that the system shouldn't have been able to be configured down that small...
what more do you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)
If we only hear about the minor problems, how many other problems are we not in the know about?
I'm not one who worships conspiracy theories, but what http://blackboxvoting.org/ [blackboxvoting.org] talks about is entirely possible, on both small and large scales.
Actually, I don't want to know. Better to get the four years out of the way and then elect a more progressive president. (Sorry, but I'm a bit on the liberal side, seeing as how I'm almost everything that current republicans seem to despise and refuse to give rights to.)
"Evidently, this message was either ignored or..." (Score:3, Interesting)
"Evidently, our voting system was so poorly designed we didn't bother to prevent people from using it once the system knew it couldn't store any new vote."
The more I read about those voting machines, the more 2 possibilities come into focus:
- The field of voting machine design and development attracts the dumbest people in the country, or
- The glaring design flaws have been inserted purposefully, to achieve plausible deniability.
To explain the 2d one a bit, if a system appears to have a sound design, yet it is somehow exposed that the votes stored by that system were manipulated, the focus will quickly go toward the people in control of the system.
On the other hand, if the current designs happen to miscount votes, it may be a local nerd that happened to carry a few smartcards in his pocket, it may be some foreign hacker that was wardialing random US numbers using carded VoIP accounts and found a voting system that picked up, or it may just be the system crumbling under the weight of its own ineptitude, among 20 other possible reasons.
Since each of those scenarios is more likely than a global conspiracy scenario, Occam's razor ends up providing a nice layer of protection.
Of course this is silly. The first explanation is the correct one.
Diebold as a collective entity is stupid. Unilect is stupid. W is stupid.
Let's all point our fingers and laugh at them.
Bad design? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course I live in a country where we are still using pen and paper. Also, I guess we would have a more difficult task of creating a UI for electronic voting, since we have 10+parties and personal votes with several candidates per party.
Anyway, congrats to the winners, although I would rather have seen Kerry as your president.
Re:It gets worse. (Score:3, Interesting)
The most striking conclusions:
The exit polls were consistently wrong only in major swing states and only in Kerry's favor. That is still the most damning indicator the election was stolen. If you are stealing elections exit polls are always the biggest obstacle. Since the Republican's started seizing power the exit polls just started to completely go to hell. They are polls and they have a margin of error but they are far and away the most accurate polls. Exit polls predicted Gore a winner in 2000 which is maybe not that conclusive. But in 2002 the whole system mysteriously cratered and was completely gutted. In 2004 the exit polls showed Kerry winning, then in the evening the system crashes for more than an hour and then when everyone wakes up in the morning and the exit polls magically precisely match the official returns. I have to say the Republicans and Karl Rove almost deserve power because they are maniacal geniuses.
The chart of Florida results tends to suggest whomever stole the election used a feint. Everyone thought the paperless touch screens were where it was going to be stolen and it appears they stole it using optical scan machines instead. The touch screen machines show believable gains for both Democrats and Republicans. The touch screens show massive increases in Republicans and dramatic drops in Democrats. Its a stretch to think that it just happens optical scanners were put in all the precincts where their was explosive Republican gains though its possible if all the rural bible thumper precincts bought optical scanners, but that is a stretch. Same thing in Ohio, everyone though it would be stolen by Diebold and evoting. But they actually switched back to punch cards and no one noticed and people are blaming evoting when it wasn't even extensively used.
So here is the Rove guide to stealing an election:
A. Steal it by so enough that its not close so there is no outrage, there is no hope in the losing camp, there are no recounts, everyone just gives up. Its a balancing act because you have to steal it by just enough, because to much might set off alarm bells. It looks like they tried to steal New Hampshire but didn't do it by enough so Kerry still ones, it appears New Hampshire swung harder than expected to Kerry.
B. You must stick a knife in the back of exit polls because they always point to places where the election was rigged. Again in 2002 the whole system went down and this time the results showed a stolen election and the Republicans just coerced the people doing them to correct them so they matched the rigged election.
C. Only steal the election in the swing states. As long as all the very red states stay red and the blue states stay blue everyone thinks everything is OK. The swing states are close enough everyone expects them to swing so when they do no one cares. It looks like Florida got carried away and was swung by enough to be suspicious but not real suspicious.
D. Use a feint. Push paperless electronic voting and stoke controversy over it. Get everyone to look at it and focus on it. Then steal the election in precincts using optical scanners and hanging chads(the old fashioned way by spoiling cards in minority districts). Punch cards are easy to tamper, you just have to pop out a second chad making it a double vote. Everyone starts screaming evoting stole the election and then when you look there you see it wasn't stolen in the evoting precincts and look like an ass. No one thinks to look at the optical scanners and punch card precincts which a couple of the people in the parent post's links did.
It looks to have been a brilliant work of art. You almost have to stand back and admire it and then you wake up and realize you are for all practical purposes in a dictatorship.
some unverified statistical data. (Score:3, Interesting)
Just for example:
Franklin County. 77.3% of voters registered Dems. Only 15.9% registered Reps. 58.5% of the votes reported FOR BUSH???
Holmes County. 72.7% of voters registered Dems. Only 21.3% registered Reps. 77% of the votes reported FOR BUSH???
Calhoun County. 82.4% of voters registered Dems. Only 11.9% registered Reps. 63.4% of the votes reported FOR BUSH???
See the data in following links.
http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.ht
http://ustogether.org/election04/florida_vote_p