Touch-Screen Voting Snags Continue

micromoog writes "New touchscreen voting machines caused problems last night in the suburbs of Washington D.C.. Several machines failed and had to be rebooted, and nine were actually removed from the site, repaired, and returned, in violation of election laws. The machines also failed to report their results correctly due to network problems. At least one lawsuit is pending. Interesting quote: 'County elections officials said it was the slowest performance in memory for counting votes on election night.'" Read on for more on how the current crop of electronic voting machines are faring.

Not every electronic voting machine misstep comes from Diebold; reader zznate points out that the Virginia machines came from Advanced Voting Solutions (dcw3 butts in: "The slogan on their home page really gives you a warm fuzzy: 'Helping Shape American History for over one hundred years.'"), as well as that the EFF won a decision for an accelerated court date of November 17 in their attempt to stop Diebold from shutting down sites that make the infamous memos available. Let's all hope this is the first in a series of many wins for the EFF against the Diebold folks and crappy e-voting schemes in general. Have you donated lately?"

Reader meadowreach writes points out more trouble on the other coast: "From news.com: 'As voters in California go to the polls, the state is launching an investigation into alleged illegal tampering with electronic voting machines in a San Francisco Bay Area county.' Diebold upgrades software without letting the state know? How reassuring."

Generic Guy writes "CNN is running a story about California not certifying the Diebold voting machines and instead opening an investigation into the use of uncertified systems. Maybe there is still hope for democracy in the U.S."

And from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Peter Desnoyers writes "Cambridge uses an optical scanner system, where you fill out SAT-style ovals with a pen and the election officer feeds them into a scanning machine. From last night's preliminary results on the Cambridge website:

'In two precincts at 7:55 and 7:59pm the memory cards reached capacity. To ensure that every ballot was counted , the Election Commission has decided to rerun the ballots for 9-1, Lexington Avenue Fire House and 11-3, Churchill Avenue. We expect that it will take between one to two hours.'

I interpret this to mean that they took all the paper ballots out of the box and ran them back through the reader. (with a bigger memory card?) In the mean time, voters were able to continue voting and no votes were lost."

Comments

Ho.

[nepheles]

Trinity dies at the start! Then Neo against Smith. Then Morpheus at the very end. The Oracle is totally wrong, it turns out.

It's a good thing ...

[Medcoop]

I don't vote. Otherwise I would be pissed off.

I predict, however, that even with all the errors and whatnot, the machines will still see fit to elect an affluent, politically moderate, white male.

I'll start giving out my votes once they start giving us candidates.

funny

[Anonymous Coward]

A Russian and an American wrestler were set to square off for the Olympic gold medal. Before the final match, the American wrestler's trainer came to him and said, "Now, don't forget all the research we've done on this Russian.

He's never lost a match because of this 'pretzel' hold he has, whatever you do don't let him get you in this hold! If he does, you're finished!"

The wrestler nodded in acknowledgement. As the match started, the American and the Russian circled each other several times, looking for an opening. All of a sudden, the Russian lunged forward, grabbing the American and wrapping him up in the dreaded pretzel hold.

A sigh of disappointment arose from the crowd and the trainer buried his face in his hands, for he knew all was lost. He couldn't watch the inevitable happen. Suddenly, there was a scream, then a cheer from the crowd and the trainer raised his eyes just in time to watch the Russian go flying up in the air. His back hit the mat with a thud and the American collapsed on top of him making the pin and winning the match.

The trainer was astounded. When he finally got the American wrestler alone, he asked, "How did you ever get out of that hold? No one has ever done it before!"

The wrestler answered, "Well, I was ready to give up when he got me in that hold but at the last moment, I opened my eyes and saw this pair of testicles right in front of my face. I had nothing to lose so with my last ounce of strength I stretched out my neck and bit those babies just as hard as I could."

"So, the trainer exclaimed, "that is what finished him off!"

"Not really. You'd be amazed how strong you get when you bite your own balls."

Something Truly Terrifying

[Don Calamari]

I know, Halloween was last week. Its still funny.
This Modern World Comic.

Re:Rebooting the voting machine

[DunbarTheInept]

Because this is America, where money is more important than democracy. If a mistake can cause people to lost track of money, that's a big deal. If a mistake can cause people to lose track of votes, no biggie, right? Get your priorities straight.

Re:Rebooting the voting machine

[DunbarTheInept]

I'm in favor of killing all exit polls, myself. Why should people who vote later in the day get to have more information about how the election is going so far? A person voting in the morning should have just as much access (or lack thereof) to information about how other people have voted as the person who votes late in the day. It shouldn't be possible to
let something like that influence votes. (Especially when there's no punishment for a news agency that lies about it, as happened in the previous election when the major networks were giving the illusion that they knew who was winning the election, even though their statisticians kept telling them the results were inside the margin of error and shouldn't be trusted - hence the many flip-flops announcing the "winner".)