Why Does a Voting Machine Need Calibration? 398
New submitter Shotgun writes "I heard on the radio that there were some issues with voting machines in Greensboro, NC (my hometown), and the story said the machines just needed "recalibration". Which made me ask, "WTF? Why does a machine for choosing between one of a few choices need 'calibration'?" This story seems to explain the issue."
Not a credible source (Score:5, Informative)
TheBlaze (i.e. Glenn Beck) is not a credible news source. Please delete this article.
Nothing changes (Score:5, Informative)
This was a problem with electronic voting machines during the 2008 elections:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081029/0131342676.shtml [techdirt.com]
https://www.google.com/search?q=2008+voting+machine+screen+calibration [google.com]
That's what touchscreens do (Score:5, Informative)
I'm speaking from a perspective of someone that regularly works as a poll worker during elections in the state of California.
One of the first things I do once our touch screen system is set up is confirm the calibration of the LCD panel. It's typical for the registration to be off by a few pixels, as our fingers are not perfect pixel-sized points. However, I have yet to experience an issue where the calibration is so bad that the wrong selection is made on behalf of the voter. Remember there are a whole host of perfectly valid reasons why this may be more of a problem for some voters than others, certainly including finger size and physical impairment affecting fine-motor skills.
If a voter did report a problem of this nature, recalibrating the touch screen would be one of the first things I would try.
Touchscreens? (Score:4, Informative)
Touchscreens—particularly resistive touchscreens—often need recalibration. On a poorly calibrated screen, tapping on one button could select the one adjacent. Not good in a voting machine with a column full of candidates in densely packed rows.
Note: I haven't read TFA, this is just the first thing that came to mind.
10 year old touchscreen machines (Score:3, Informative)
Needs to be calibrated sometimes. I work elections for Clark County, Nevada. I've worked every election the last 10 years. And yes, the touchscreens can fall out of calibration and make it difficult to select the correct candidates. I can't speak to other election districts, but here in Clark County we're trained on how to perform this calibration on site (it's very simple) so that any problems reported by voters can be handled right away.
Re:Touchscreens... (Score:5, Informative)
Different touchscreen technology.
Old-school surface capacitance touchscreen kiosks often lose calibration - or can be deliberately miscalibrated for fun and profit.
Explanation (Score:5, Informative)
First that letter was all about setting up a legal and public relations basis to question the election later.
Second, yes voting machines need calibration. Different types require different kinds.
For example the touchscreens, usually older resistive touch screens get mis calibrated on position. You have to remeber these things get locks in closets and sit in non-temperature controlled ware houses for a couple years at a time between elections, then they are jostled in trucks, cleaned with cleaners, and sometime run off various power sources. Empirically they do go out of calibration.
I personally have a ballot I saved from an AUtomark paper ballot printer in which all the votes are off by one oval width. that is 100% of the votes are incorrect and you can tell because a few are printed past the range of ovals.
Opscans are fairly easy to allign since they have relatively few degrees of freedom but they do get misalligned and become sensitive to printing tolerances.
Old lever machines used to have the gears wear down.
The solution to all this is not to require perfect everything but to have ways to check things. hand marked Paper ballots and some sampled recounts of those paper ballots such as is done in New Mexico is I believe the best compromise between transparency, robustness and simplicity. It's robust against human and machine errors so mere mortals can carry out very transparent elections. It's also robust against voter turnout variations too since it only takes more pencils to let more people vote, and if a machine breaks, you can still gather the ballots, so you dont get long lines at the polls.
omg haha (Score:3, Informative)
“He played around with the field a little and realized that in order to vote for Romney, his finger had to be exactly on the mark,”
welcome to the age of tablet computing.
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Re:Touchscreens? (Score:5, Informative)
four (Score:5, Informative)
In his book "Arguing With Idiots" (alternatively titled "My Inner Dialog"), Beck claims that Article 1, Section 9 Clause 1 of the constitution put a $10 entrance fee on immigrants coming to this country because the founding fathers "actually put a price tag on coming to this country: $10 per person. Apparently they felt like there was a value to being able to live here."
In actuality, Article 1 Section 9 Clause 1 was intended to prevent congress from ending the slave trade.
Re:Not so. (Score:5, Informative)
I've never had any calibration issues with my iPad. This kind of thing is a hallmark of older touch-screens, modern devices don't have this problem.
That's because your iPad uses a capacitive screen. There are still plenty of low-end tablets and devices that use resistive type screens that are prone to this problem.
Re:Explanation (Score:5, Informative)
Because... ooh! Shiny!
Re:Explanation (Score:4, Informative)
Unknown number of candidates. Basically every time it comes down to this, want to fix it, then go back to paper ballots and pencils with hand counts watched over by independent and political observers. Keep it simple stupid but no in the US lobbyists wanted to make sure their corporate funders needed to make extra profit and when it comes to cheating on election electronic voting machines and vote counting machines are in reality the only way to do it.
Re:fuck electronic voting (Score:2, Informative)
The electoral college, again, represents the states. This ensures that even sparsely populated states receive some weight in the process.
Otherwise, who would care about Alaskans, North Dakotans, Wyomingegians, etc? Candidates could play the odds simply pursuing the most populous states. Thus, California, New York, Florida, etc, issues would dominate the campaign (even more so than today).
What I'm saying is that this *isn't* a bug, it was included as a specific design feature by the founders. And if you think that's unfair, no doubt you consider the US Senate to be just as awful. How can Wyoming have the same power as California in ratifying treaties, approving presidential appointees, or removing a president from office?