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

Re:Rebooting the voting machine

[Illbay]

It ain't the glitches that bother me.

It's the fact that most "crackers" are Democrats.

They have to be, to have such disregard for the law.

Re:GOP suit

[Angst Badger]

Wait the GOP is suing? What about all that stuff I read on the internet that Diebold is in the pocket of the GOP? How can I believe anything I read on the Internet any more? Does this mean that Diebold is in the Democrats pockets?

Answer:Yes, it's ture, Diebold isn't in anyone's pockets - they are simply incompetent.

Or it just means that the Republicans, like the Democrats, are not a monolithic block.

It's not the Republicans as such that you have to worry about -- I'm sure that the overwhelming majority of Republicans would be every bit as outraged as the Democrats over the possibility of vote-tampering. Every reasonable person knows that's a sword that cuts both ways.

The Republican faction that you have to worry about is the unholy alliance between the Neocons, who have no respect for the opinions of the electorate, and the so-called Religious Right, who believe that they are answerable to a higher law and therefore cannot be trusted to uphold statutory law.

Re:Rebooting the voting machine

[evilempireinc]

yeah. I hated it when Clinton bombed Iraq to deflect attention from Monica

Re:GOP suit

[willtsmith]

Answer:Yes, it's ture, Diebold isn't in anyone's pockets - they are simply incompetent.

The CEO of Diebold is a GW Bush 'Pioneer'. That means he have Bush $100,000 plus. You know he wants a return on investment!!!!

Beyond that he is also the campaign coordinator for the Ohio effort to re-elect George Bush. Geez, that's like the allegory of Florida's chief election officer being the Florida state Bush campaign coordinator ... Oh wait, that actually happened ;-)

The refusal to admit a partisan bias isn't nieve. It's just plain dumb!!!!

Diebold CEO delivers cash. Bush delivers funding for Diebold machines (and a VERY nice tax break for the rich). Diebold delivers rigged elections for Bush and Republicans. Bush delivers more money so EVERYBODY can use the wonderful machines.