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

It was the psychics

[fruey]

They just touched the screen with their whole palm, and expected it to sense who they wanted to vote for :)

Push the VOTE button!

[KirkH]

If they can't figure out to push the VOTE button to count their selection, maybe they shouldn't be voting anyway...

Re:Push the VOTE button!

[Performer Guy]

Without any audit it is impossible to tell if the problem was their stupidity. I have no problem expecting people to be smart enough to do this, but for all we know those votes could have been lost through any number of technical errors, there's absolutely no means to check this with no audit trail and secretive software practices. The only available audit, tallying people showing up vs casting votes shows a significant discrepancy. That is cause for concern, and indicates the need for a better audit trail. Something that is simply being ignored and denied at every request.

That's it....

[moitz]

Florida is not allowed to vote in the next federal election. Bad Florida! Bad! Go to your room!

-moitz-

Voter intent?

[MoneyT]

Can someone please explain to me when this became a land where we had to determine what a voter intended and not what he actualy voted for (or in this case didn't vote for). Ballots are fairly simple things, and most of us learned about them in 4th grade. If you are unable to comprehend how to work a ballot, by law, polling places are supposed to have someone there to explain and assist you. If you don't take advantage of it, that was your choice. Vote right, or don't vote at all, but don't be bitching when your incorrect ballot isn't counted.

Re:Voter intent?

[aborchers]

Can someone please explain to me when this became a land where we had to determine what a voter intended and not what he actualy voted for (or in this case didn't vote for).

In the case of Florida, it's a matter of law that the intent of the voter is to be honored. The intent stipulation arises out of an acknoledgement that all recording systems are subject to innacuracies, and that the noblest thing to do is to honor the will of the voter, rather than the output of the machine.

This is obviously an extreme example, but it should be illustrative:

Imagine a ballot-punching machine where a peg for one of the candidates breaks an hour before the polls close. Noone notices this and the voters go on pressing the button for that candidate until closing time, assuming they voted for him or her.

In the end, the vote count is wrong, underrepresenting that candidate's support. In this case, the intent of the voters was not registered even though they acted in good faith and without making any mistakes.

It is this type of scenario that the intent law is intended to remedy. The will of the voters is paramount to the output of a machine that can be tampered with, broken, or buggy.

Re: Or use the VOTE wizard!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the vote wizard. This is where you can make your selection for President of the United States. Remember that many others are voting and your selection may not match the final choice for President of the United States.

What would you like to do?

• Vote Democratic (Decrease my own personal responsibility but raise everybody's taxes)
• Vote Republican (Keep more of my own income but increase my own personal responsibility)
• Help with understanding these options (I live in Florida)

Re:Controversial but...

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

That reminds me of the little windows app that made the e-mail rounds a few years back. It was a dialog box that asked "Are you gay?" with a Yes and No. If you tried to move the mouse over the No button, the box moved away from the pointer.

Another thing that it reminds me of is an news investigation into supermarkets scanning incorrect prices at the checkout. It turns out that almost all mis-scans are in the store's favor (i.e., scans a higher price than the actual item).

I think my point is that with the machines, how do you know you completed the transaction? There's no receipt or verification. Maybe I pressed vote, but it didn't register. Maybe there's a bug in the code that says:
if vote != Republican rollback else commit

And how do you know the system isn't rigged or at least tilted a little? Your post, while correct, assumes that nothing ever goes wrong. See Common Sense vs. H. Chad, 2000. Things always go wrong. These systems have no way to deal with that.

Technology can solve this.

[alan_dershowitz]

It has been verified that faulty citizen failure has resulted in at least one contested Florida election. It's no surprise. Some of these citizens have been around since the '20s! They cost a fortune to maintain. Clearly we can do better than this.

I recommend replacing them. Shiny new electronic voters would reduce the problem of incorrect vote selection, as well as ambiguous ballots, or the inability to understand clear, spoken or written English. Computers are far better at binary selection than senior citizens, so they should have no problem.

Re: Or use the VOTE wizard!

[Waffle Iron]

Keep more of my own income but increase my own personal responsibility

It's not keeping more of your own income; it's continuing to accept the services you formerly paid for with taxes (in fact taking more services), but now paying for them with a cash advance from a multitrillion dollar credit card. You're still going to pay it all back one day with money from your income, but with interest.

Re:Voters' "Intent"??

[aborchers]

I'm sorry, but since when was any vote-counting system designed to interpret what a voter's intent was, beyond correctly-cast votes?

Vote-counting systems (in the big sense of end-to-end counting and certification, not just talking about balloting hardware) in Florida must honor the intent of the voter as a matter of law.

The law is designed to address the array of things that can go wrong with the voting process and equipment, and ensure that the intent of the voter is paramount to any vagueries introduced by the equipment or counting procedures. How anyone could think this is a bad thing (unless they were in the process of exploiting such vagueries) is beyond me...