Touch Screen Voting Trouble in Florida

usn2fsu03 writes "Here we go again with another election controversy in South Florida. Touch screen voting was used in a State House election that was won by twelve votes. Unfortunately, there were 134 people who went through the process of checking in to vote, but either did not vote or cast a vote that was not counted. Without a paper trail it is anyone's guess as to what those voters' intentions were. Obviously, there is work to be done in the Election Supervisor's office before November comes around."

Comments

Re:electronic voting sucks

[Zeinfeld]

Some people just will NOT vote correctly. They will NOT follow instructions. They just won't.

You are guilty of common problem amongst computer types - blame the user when the machine is at fault.

The cause of large number of Florida vote counting errors in 2000 was purely machine errors. A crease or smudge or even a speck of dust could be interpreted as a vote causing the whole ballot to be rejected.

In the white, republican voting areas the voting machines were programmed to buzz and alert the workers to the fact that there was a problem and the ballot would be put through again or the voter got a fresh ballot.

In the black areas the exact same voting machines were programmed to silently eat up the ballot and ignore the vote.

It had nothing to do with the users, it was purely the way the machines were configured.