Voting Machine Problem Reports Already Rolling In 386
Several readers have submitted news of the inevitable problems involved with trying to securely collect information from tens of millions of people on the same day. A video is making the rounds of a touchscreen voting machine registering a vote for Mitt Romney when Barack Obama was selected. A North Carolina newspaper is reporting that votes for Romney are being switched to Obama. Voters are being encouraged to check and double-check that their votes are recorded accurately. In Ohio, some recently-installed election software got a pass from a District Court Judge. In Galveston County, Texas, poll workers didn't start their computer systems early enough to be ready for the opening of the polls, which led to a court order requiring the stations to be open for an extra two hours at night. Yesterday we discussed how people in New Jersey who were displaced by the storm would be allowed to vote via email; not only are some of the emails bouncing, but voters are being directed to request ballots from a county clerk's personal Hotmail account. If only vote machines were as secure as slot machines. Of course, there's still the good, old fashioned analog problems; workers tampering with ballots, voters being told they can vote tomorrow, and people leaving after excessively long wait times.
Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting machines are a solution to a problem that doesn't exits.
Nothing beats a paper ballot and a #2 pencil.
Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Informative)
That would work fine if I only had one comment to post every two years.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
#2 pencil is conductive. That makes it easy to read it by machine. I suppose you could do the same thing with a camera and a computer though.
Does any modern scanning equipment use electrical conductivity of pencil marks to read forms? I could see maybe back in the 60's when cameras and photo sensors were expensive, but I'd be surprised if anything built in the past 30 years doesn't use optical sensors.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, most equipment, such as Scantron, etc, does. While it's possible to do it optically, it can be done much faster by using electrical conductivity. That said, when, instead of correctly spotting 100 marks on a multiple choice answer sheet, you only need to do a few points, optical sensors probably make more sense.
All of the Scanners on Scantron's page say they do Optical Mark Recognition and/or Imaging. And they can detect ink or pencil marks.
http://www.scantron.com/scanners/ [scantron.com]
Do you have an actual reference for equipment that uses electrical conductivity to count marks? As I said, I can certainly believe that early machines did, but not anything built recently. I really don't see how electrical counting could be faster than optical counters -- keeping a good electrical contact with fast moving paper seems a lot harder than bouncing light off the paper.
I found an article confirming that early Scantron machines did use electrical conductivity to count marks:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/10/why-you-used-to-have-to-use-2-pencils-with-scantron-forms/ [todayifoundout.com]
The earliest scantron-like machines used electrical conductivity, rather than light, to read forms. Graphite is quite conductive, so the machines simply had a mechanism at each markable area location to make contact with the form and detect if an electrical current is detected across the area. These systems were used as early as the 1930s.
But it didn't say when optical scanning came into use.
That site also has the obligatory XKCD comic:
http://xkcd.com/499/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Funny)
A paper ballot and a black marker beats the hell out of the paper ballot and the No. 2 pencil.
Paper also beats rock. But watch out! Here comes the scissors.
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Ladies and gentlemen! The 2012 election results: Obama beat Romney 3 out of 5!
There was some minor rioting as various claims of "hey no changies" were issued.
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See, THIS is why we need a Constitutional Amendment to declare Rock, Paper, Scissors as a game between 1 man, 1 rock, and 1 pair of scissors, period. No additional rules, no changies, no shotgun.
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Actually, the game should be between 1 rock, 1 piece of paper, and 1 pair of scissors, which is a refinement we will make sure to be in the actual draft.
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Cutlery United says that scissors are people, too.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Funny)
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I like this idea. The candidates get bussed from town to town over the course of a couple of weeks. People throw rocks at the candidates that they don't like. Whoever survives the trip, is elected!
We already know neither of them would survive.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Funny)
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I like this idea. The candidates get bussed from town to town over the course of a couple of weeks. People throw rocks at the candidates that they don't like. Whoever survives the trip, is elected!
We already know neither of them would survive.
That's not a bug, it's a feature!
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You had it easy! In my day, we had vote with our brain matter. Me old dad would drop us on our 'eads 'til our skulls cracked open and would scrawl an X on the ballot with our gray matter.
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A problem that doesn't exist? How about the high cost of counting ballots by hand? The fact that it's extremely hard to do a proper audit trail on dead tree media?
Paper ballots aren't even that reliable. Elections have turned on judgement calls over how sloppy a ballot can be before it's ignored.
And one more time: they are not a safeguard against fraud. Where do you suppose the term "stuffing the ballot box" comes from?
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I just cast a paper ballot an hour ago. There are bubbles I fill in next to my choices, and then a scanner reads the ballot for instant reporting. Then, if there are any problems, the paper ballot, minus any way to identify who cast it, remains to be recounted by hand if necessary.
Paper ballots aren't perfect with regards to fraud. They still beat the pants off any electronic system, though. At best, electronic systems that print a paper trail that the voter can visually inspect are still vulnerable eve
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Have you ever cast an absentee ballot? The one's I've used were quite anonymous.
Want to fix an election? Send your guys to the polling places and have them beat up the people that vote against you and reward the people who voted against you. Oh wait, secret ballot....
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Have you ever cast an absentee ballot? The one's I've used were quite anonymous.
The one I did would have allowed for my boss to have collected it and filled it out for me, then sit over me and watch me sign it and then he could mail it himself. The only "issue" would be that he'd have to have me at work by 7 for a 12 hour day on election day, as they are supposed to not count absentee ballots until *after* the election (And only then if the margin is close enough) and then they strike any where the "absentee" voter voted in person.
It's trivial now to force a vote for a particular can
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The fact that it's extremely hard to do a proper audit trail on dead tree media?
I must admit that it's a lot easier to do proper audit trails on electronic media. Whoever controls the media pretty much decides who gets elected. Can't get much simpler than that.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
How about the high cost of counting ballots by hand?
What high costs? You volunteer to do it.
And one more time: they are not a safeguard against fraud.
Having multiple volunteer workers from all sides of the political spectrum is.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
The high cost in volunteer time. Just because volunteers are paying those costs, doesn't mean they don't exist. And it isn't a good excuse to take advantage of them.
You can't afford an afternoon every few years to keep your political system running well?
How do you ensure that you have volunteers from "all" sides of the political spectrum instead of just "both" sides?
I don't. That's up to everyone to do for themselves. If you don't volunteer, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
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At least with paper ballots someone has to commit a crime to tamper with them. It can't be just an 'undocumented feature' of the voting machine.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
We use paper ballots in Canada... counters get paid a small stipend (something like $30) to count the ballots, there's scrutineers to make sure they're counting properly, and any party can send a representative to watch the counting. When a ballot is counted, the person reads out loud who the vote is for, and shows it to another person to confirm. Any party can request a recount on the spot, and there's an automatic recount when the two leading candidates are close enough together in votes. Because there's paper ballots, we can keep a physical record of the voting, and in the event that there's a discrepancy or challenge, we can always go back and tally the votes again.
Since each polling station isn't more than 200-300 voters (most voting locations will have 6 or 7 polling stations each), we're still able to have results by the end of the night.
Considering that your current election is costing an estimated $1billion, I think you can afford to use paper ballots.
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Sounds like Americans should start thinking about a constitutional amendment to fix your voting system. Something like Elections Canada to run the elections and have fair impartial election districts.
Seems that for a democracy the most important thing is to have fair elections where most everyone can agree who the winner is. With this election looking to be another close to tie, that'll make 3 out of the last 4 elections questionable.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
A problem that doesn't exist? How about the high cost of counting ballots by hand?
Canada does it. Its pretty efficient.
Oh noes you will cry out, America has 10x the population, and it will cost 10x as much, and require 10x as many people.
This is all true. But that 10x cost is divided by 10x the population, making it cost the same per capita.
Another way of looking at it would be to consider that the 50 states each essentially run their own elections, and even the most populous states aren't more populous than Canada.
The point is that Canada manages it just fine, and there is no valid argument that it can't be scaled in the USA.
Paper ballots are counted by elections canada temporary staff, with oversight by full time employees, and members of the party. I've participated in a couple myself.
My observations:
Disputes over spoiled ballots are pretty much a non-issue.
Their are several protocols in place to safegaurd against fraud. Stuffing the ballot box would not be simple at all. Each station has a ballot box linked to a list of voters, and a record of who voted. The votes are counted against the number of voters on the list who voted.
Per the procedures:
At the polling station specified on the voter information card, the poll clerk crosses the voter's name off the voters list. The deputy returning officer hands the voter a folded ballot with the initials of the deputy returning officer on the outside.
(At this point the voter goes behind the voter screen to make their mark.)
The voter then re-folds the ballot so that the deputy returning officer's initials are visible and hands it to the deputy returning officer. The deputy returning officer checks the initials and the number shown on the counterfoil, removes the counterfoil and discards it, and returns the ballot to the voter. The voter, or the deputy returning officer at the voter's request, places the folded ballot in the ballot box. The poll clerk then places a mark in the "Voted" column beside the elector's name on the voters list.
The ballots themselves have counterfeit protections, and are carefully accounted for. As each vote is cast serial numbers are checked. (But not recorded alongside the voter who placed the vote.)
Really you'd have to corrupt a pretty large chunk of the polling staff, then they could simply ignore the votes and write down whatever totals they wanted as long as it added up to the number of people who voted, and certify and transmit the results them. You'd still have to get it past the other parties observers, but they usually don't send enough people to watch everything all the time.*
And then as long as no one called for a recount, no one would ever know.
* Of course they *could* and if fraud were a significant problem, they probably would. In my experience we usually have a couple party affiliated observers in a polling site with 6 or 7 polling stations. The closer the anticipated race the more scrutiny.
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How about the high cost of counting ballots by hand?
I've been a poll worker here (in California) several times, and the only hand-counting of ballots we did was literally just that -- counting the number of paper ballots in the box at the end of the day, to make sure it matched the number of signatures we had gathered in the log book. With a team of 5 poll workers doing it in parallel (and checking each other's work), it takes about 30 minutes to complete. Given that poll workers are paid a flat fee ($100 or so for the day), the cost isn't high.
The actual
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Voting machines are a solution to a problem that doesn't exits.
Vote count delays? Issues with recounts? The ease in which paper votes can be "lost" in transit to the counting facility? The ease with which paper ballots can be tampered with? The fact that there are plenty of people who can easily screw up a paper ballot (aka hanging chads)?
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
Vote count delays?
If done right, it doesn't take more than evening by hand.
Issues with recounts?
What issues?
The ease in which paper votes can be "lost" in transit to the counting facility?
They are to be counted on location, not transported anywhere.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is vote count delay even an issue? I know the 24 hour median wants results in prime time, but who cares about that? The president isn't sworn in until late January, let the counters take as long as is needed to do it right.
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The fact that there are plenty of people who can easily screw up a paper ballot (aka hanging chads)?
If hanging chads are a serious problem, then don't use a marking method that can result in chads. I like my precinct's solution, each candidate has an arrow with a gap pointing to the name:
--- ---> John Doe
--- ---> Joe Schmo
--- ---> Jane Doe
To vote for that candidate, you just fill in the gap with a marker.
Ballots are fed into a machine and read instantly. A confirmation beep ensures a good read. Paper ballots are retained for validation and/or recount.
Electronic voting is not immune to
Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Informative)
1. Delays? What delays? In Canada, barring extremely close races (where it's going to take you days regardless), we know the results before bed.
2. What issues with recounts?
3. Lost? Counting facility? The ballots are counted in the same building, often the same room, as where they're put in the box.
4. Tamper with? In what manner? During the counting? That's what the observers from each party are there for, in addition to the elections officials.
5. Chads? You put an X in the box. No stupid "punch a hole in the sheet with a herring" or "draw a line across the page" nonsense.
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Better solution: mark-sense paper ballots that are filled out with a _permanent_ marker. That way, they can be both machine and hand counted.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't use a machine, and you don't hire people. You take multiple volunteers who count in public.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
Won't happen. Ballots are counted by hand.
As the ballot counts are done in pairs, and even then are subject to being witnessed by the candidates or their representatives, you'd have to bribe one heck of a lot of people... up to and possibly even including the candidates themselves. Ballots with any writing or other identifying marks on them other than the voter's selection, which must be marked as described by the illustrated posters near each voting station, which might distinguish them from other ballots are considered "spoiled" and are not counted.
This is also can't happen, since the ballots are counted right there, almost immediately after the polls close.
The only real danger is if there is some sort of natural disaster which threatens one of the polling stations. I'm not sure what the recourse of EC would be in such a case... possibly a revote for people in that area.
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That's exactly how they work fine in large parts of the US too. Voting is a solved problem, and yet people still insist on innovating which always causes more problems than it solves.
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Innovating? I think you mean companies like Diebold keep whining "give us more money" to the politicians?
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Where innovating is a nice way of saying "funneling public money to private buddies and corrupting the electoral process while you're at it".
The most staggering part, however, is that US elections aren't followed by a spree of arrests. Then again, the DA who would have to prosecute is an elected official as well. Round and round she goes, where she is, nobody knows.
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But you're right, paper ballots work just fine. And counting by hand doesn't meaningfully slow down the process of results for polling stations from being made public.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
For legally blind, there's a very large print version of the ballot in the booth. My legally blind grandmother never had any difficulty voting.
For completely blind, there's a braille template.
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
How does a blind person cast a private and secret ballot?
For blind people, there is a sleeve the ballot can be inserted into which has Braille markings with the candidate's names and openings through which the voter can mark the "X". Also an election official can, if the voter wishes, read the names of the candidates while guiding the voters hand down the openings in the sleeve to acquaint the voter with the options. Then the official leaves the area behind the voting screen so the voter can vote in secret. At his/her option, a voter can designate an assistant to help them with voting, who is required to sign a declaration that they will assist the voter in voting the way they intended, and not disclose the candidate whom the voter selected to anyone. A voter, if he/she wishes can have an election official assist with the voting in a similar way, and of course, such officials are sworn to assist correctly.
Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with hand counting paper ballots is that there is no reliable way to hand count 90 million ballots.
The process is the same as counting 100 ballots. Counting by hand scales linearly, without problem.
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Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are ~90 million ballots that are supposed to be counted. The fact that this gets divided up between thousands of different people doesn't change the fact that 90 million need to be counted.
and its been pointed out to you, mr "I'm scared of big numbers" poster, that when you distribute it, the 'scary big numbers' reduce to more managable ones.
you don't really 'get' the idea that big problems can be broken down into smaller ones and that adding 'computers' to the problem isn't always (or often!) the right thing to do?
canada seems to have dealt with the distributed effort thing just fine. its a proven concept. it just does not go along with your narrative, that's all, and that seems to annoy you.
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That is subject to coercion, and thus not usable as a voting method.
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Anymore coercion than having to wait in line for hours on a day that you have to normally work? That, and an audit would be able to detect the amount of coercion.
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Having the vote on a workday is completely insane to start with.
And why audit to detect something when you can just prevent it in the first place?
Re:Online Voting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Online Voting (Score:5, Informative)
"GO vote for Mitt Romney, or we'll break your fucking knee caps," seems to work regardless of the voting method used.
That is why voting is private. You can threaten someone to go vote some way all you want, but you have no way of knowing if they did or not.
That is not the case for remote voting, where you can stand next to them and make sure they vote the way you want.
Disgraceful (Score:3, Insightful)
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you mean the idiot in the video showing a clear selection of Obama and the machine choosing Romney?
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FWIW, it apparently happens both ways...
http://www.krdo.com/news/Pueblo-GOP-Machines-switched-Romney-votes-to-Obama/-/417220/17252566/-/qpcqxr/-/index.html [krdo.com]
There's likely no conspiracy, just a few crappy uncalibrated voting machines out there. Nothing like a hotly contested election to get the spotlight out on something that probably nets out to nothing in the end.
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There's likely no conspiracy, just a few crappy uncalibrated voting machines out there
Supposedly someone has posted a video showing them working the way down the screen with the pointer, looking for the calibration bounds, and it turned out that a solid block over the two major-party candidates always cast a vote for the same one, but on the two third-party candidates it worked perfectly.
What happened to those election monitors? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What happened to those election monitors? (Score:4, Informative)
they said it was stupid that we didnt require ids to vote then media ignored them
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/06/foreign_election_officials_amazed_by_trust_based_us_voting_system
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I agree, it's stupid that the US doesn't have free compulsory national photo IDs.
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Apparently texas wants to put them in jail!
E-votes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:E-votes (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who count the votes might decide everything, but they are still accountable to anyone who might be witness to them doing said counting.
That's probably why the electronic machines are being pushed as a replacement.
So that there is no counting that can be witnessed.
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which, ironically, makes the machines unaccountable to anybody... and if an error occurs, there is a greater chance of it remaining undetected.
If that's the whole point, then kudos to the American election system.
Embarrassed (Score:3, Insightful)
As an American I am embarrassed by these problems. Is this due to incompetence? Not enough people caring? How can we expect government to grow and manage things like disaster relief, healthcare, and retirement when we simply can't get a working election system. This morning I went to vote in DC. I waited 60 minutes in line to get inside a church that had one working machine. Really? In the middle of a city we have a voting station with a single voting machine. Should I expect a single nurse for my flu shot?
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I'm embarrased for you too. It's not that hard to get voting systems right and they scale with population perfectly fine - the fact that America can make a complete arse of it is a sign of how far you guys have fallen.
20 years ago - "leaders of the free world"; Today - broke, unemployed, corrupt, and cant even hold simple elections.
How many times (Score:2)
can you keep on walking into the wall. Year after year all you hear is problems with voting machine. Who is paying whom to keep having those thing year after year instead of paper?
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The thing is, there has probably been more rampant voter fraud during the days of paper ballots than anything happening with these machines.
Ignoring the fact that you have absolutely no data to backup your assertion...
The difference is, with electronic machines NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW. It is possible (even if difficult) to find lost ballots, get evidence of ballot tampering, etc. But good luck doing that without physical evidence.
And it doesn't even have to be malicious tampering. Do those thing run RAID storage? What if someone brings a magnet into the voting booth?
It's not a big problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Look guys, it's a few glitches. There are what, 350 million people in the US, half are eligible to vote, so 175 million voters. A couple of thousand counted wrong is tops a few VOTE RECORDED: MITT ROMNEY
Re:It's not a big problem. (Score:5, Funny)
The fuck happened there? I swear I ERROR: VOTE ALREADY RECORDED.
Re:It's not a big problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
a few glitches......are you kidding me?
Are you seriously telling me that a 38-word post was tl;dr and you ERROR: VOTE ALREADY RECORDED.
Inevitable? (Score:2)
inevitable problems involved with trying to securely collect information from tens of millions of people on the same dayk
Some problems are inevitable. But most of the ones we have are avoided by other major democracies.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/05/opinion/frum-election-chaos/index.html [cnn.com]
But, Bush said we could export democracy (Score:2)
Our number one export apparently, in terms of money spent. And yet, we can't actually have democracy at home. How much of a banana republic do we need to become before the UN starts to intervene and forces us to be monitored by their people to make sure we have a fair election?
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Our number one export apparently, in terms of money spent. And yet, we can't actually have democracy at home.
The joke at the time was, "And if it works in Iraq, we'll try it at home."
Yelled at by an old lady; still managed to vote (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in a small town outside San Francisco. It seems that two local districts vote in the place I went this morning, so a guy at the door routed voters to table A or table B depending on our street addresses. The problem was that competing teams of little-old-lady election volunteers were engaged in a turf war over who "owned" which voting booths. When I got my ballot from table A, the booths closest to it were occupied and the volunteers directed my wife and I to the ones nearer table B.
You would have thought I had peed all over the table B volunteers' Thanksgiving turkey.
Little Old Lady: Sir? Sir! These are for table B! You're supposed to use the booths over by table A!
Me: Umm, is there a difference?
LOL: Yes! These are for table B! If they're all filled up, table B people won't be able to vote!
Me: Well, table A's booths are all filled up and I'd like to vote, too.
LOL, whining and angry: But these are for table B!
Man. Hell hath no wrath like the elderly women proudly doing their quadrennial duties.
Re: two local districts (Score:3)
.
I am guessing that the booths tabulated results for two different voting precincts/districts, and that the routing/sorting of voters as they entered was based upon which distrist contains their address.
This answer would make sense if the voting occured in the booth electronically. If,
ES&S IVotronic (Score:5, Informative)
The machine in the video [youtube.com] is an ES&S IVotronic terminal. It's the same terminal I voted on this morning. It directly appears the digitizer is incorrectly calibrated. What the video author doesn't show is the paper tabulator in the lower left corner. It would of clearly showed his vote being tallied incorrectly. Perhaps he was voting Romney and didn't want his cast vote shown, but the paper trail recorder clearly shows your selection in the window. It even shows when you got back and correct a selection. Now, they key is that each candidate field on the screen is independently calibrated and can be re-calibrated [wired.com] in under a minute by any third party.
At minimum, this terminal should of been isolated and inspected for tampering. Hopefully that was the ultimate outcome. I know I would of not left the area until a proper election official arrived.
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Arizona too. I travel a lot, so as soon as they gave the option for permanent vote by mail status, I signed up.
Stupid easy too. I moved from Tucson to Phoenix (both in AZ), and when I changed my Drivers license address (on the web), I was able to register to vote, and get the permanent vote by mail. Ease peasy
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Move to all mail voting, or in Ca at least I understand you can apply for permanent vote by mail status.
The Suffragettes would be terribly upset, we'd never hear the end of it.
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I just wanted you to know that this was a very nice sliver of comedy gold and that someone else got the joke.
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I live in oregon, and not only can you vote by paper, but if your disabled you can vote online! It makes it very easy to vote, you dont even need postage (considered a "poll tax".
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Move to all mail voting,
Why yes, there's certainly no failure modes for that. Not at all.
I like having a polling place. It means that you actually know that your vote entered the system, unlike vote-by-mail where it can be thrown out for any number of reasons without you ever having a chance to contest them. If your right to vote is contested, you know it, and if you've provided sufficient proof that you can vote your vote goes in the same box with everyone else's. If the clerk throws your vote-by-mail ballot out at 9PM on elect
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Anything that is not voting in person is susceptible to coercion, and thus not a reliable method for democratic voting.
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Re:How hard is this to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Harder than an ATM machine? Harder than a nuclear power plant control room? Harder than a 787 Dreamliner fly by wire system?
The key problem: Price.
Your examples can be counted on to be in use pretty much all of the time.
Not so with voting machines, where they sit unused in warehouses for months on end.
As a result, it's hard to justify to "fiscally responsible" election committees that your more expensive device is the best for the job.
One of the easiest things to cheap out on is the touchscreen. The touch sensors on your iOS or Android device are generally top of the line capacitive sensors - and even they have trouble from time to time.
If you go for a cheap resistive touch sensor, you can be pretty screwed. I know my office's HP DeskJet all-in-one has an extremely low-end touch screen - it's best described as "touch the screen, and get anything except what you intended to press.
I'm far more willing to chalk it up to deprecated, cheap-ass touch sensors than I am to call it fraud.
Frankly, we need the guys designing slot machine or video poker to do our voting machines - with the same regulations too (ie. full source code disclosure, full schematics, and so on). I think it's criminal that we require casinos to prove their machines aren't hacked, and require full source code and schematics -- but the same standard doesn’t exist for voting machines.
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Harder than an ATM machine? Harder than a nuclear power plant control room? Harder than a 787 Dreamliner fly by wire system?
In all of the cases you describe, a contractor that screws up will be fined and sued into oblivion (ATM machine spitting out money, nuclear power plant meltdown, 787 falling down from the sky due to faulty wiring)
What we desperately need is to sue the contractors responsible for delivering malfunctioning voter machines into non-existence. Not "take machines offline" and probably buy from the same contractor next year.
Of course an even better solution is to go back to paper...
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This happens in other places, for example, Massachusetts.
Re:What happened in SC (Score:4, Informative)
FYI: In House District 2 in South Carolina, apparantly no democrat registered to oppose incumbant Joe Wilson [wikipedia.org] (yes he was the same person that shouted out "you lie").
The democratic party isn't doing so great in SC. According to the wikipedia [wikipedia.org]...
The South Carolina Democratic Party controls none of the statewide offices and holds the minority in both the South Carolina Senate and the South Carolina House of Representatives. Democrats hold one of the state's six U.S. House seats.
Re:Why isnt voting Compulsory? (Score:4, Informative)
Compulsory voting tends to favor the incumbent. Besides, if you're too fucking lazy to make sure you're registered and come down to a poll, who the fuck cares what you think anyways.
Re: (Score:2)
other countries have compulsory voting.
What doesnt the USA?
Because we're not quite as stupid?
An Americans right to free speech should make it compulsory to vote and compulsory to include on all forms "None of the Above".
As long as we make suicide compulsory for people who come up with such dumb ideas. Rights aren't obligations.
Re: (Score:3)
At least here in Las Vegas the voting machines here are held to the same standards of slot machines... The rest of the nation has it wrong sadly.
You mean no matter who's using the machine, the odds are they won't get what they wanted, but they'll feel like they got close enough that they keep coming back to pull the lever? No, I think that's pretty much what the rest of the nation gets.
Re:Touchscreen video is a fraud (Score:5, Informative)
I voted with one of those machines today. It's not a touchscreen, you use a trackball to select the candidate. The guy is obviously trying to make it look like the machine doesn't work by touching the screen and not showing the trackball being moved.
I'm a PA (Pgh) resident and I used the exact same machine today. It did _not_ have a trackball.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So your theory is that a network that even in it's highest rated time slot only gets around 3 million viewers is somehow able to single handedly force a partisan divide in a nation of 350 million? That would be akin to me blaming the dumbing down of America on MSNBC.
I'm pretty sure the divide is being driven by people who think Fox news is the biggest threat to democracy and the source of all political doom in the US or for that matter focus on any single media source as the cause. The cause is much more