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More E-voting Problems in California
thefultonhow writes "Wired News is running a story about Napa County, CA's problems with their new E-voting system. Not only did an optical scanning machine fail to record absentee ballots properly, necessitating a recount of 13,000 ballots, but now Registrar of Voters John Tuteur is saying that the machine used in precincts failed to count 6,692 votes. The incumbent Napa County Supervisor had originally lost his bid for reelection by only 50 votes (the recount of absentee ballots bumped that up to 107 votes), so with nearly 7,000 votes gone AWOL, this is a big deal." The first Wired link above shows that the discovery of the problem was apparently mostly chance: if none of the 10 (ten!) ballots picked for rescanning had exhibited the problem, they might not have figured it out. It also suggests a new strategy for rigging the vote: pass out pens of a certain type in districts unfavorable to your candidate, then calibrate the machine not to read that type of ink.
The fact that the ballots are 'counted' by a machine doesn't make this an "e-voting" story.
This problem has been around for YEARS! Nothing to see here, folks. Take off your tinfoil hats and move along.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
RTFA - this IS about paper and pen ballots, and a machine's inability to properly record it. This has NOTHING to do with people voting on computers.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
"I don't understand why there is so much resistance to voting machines that print receipts for each voter."
'Show me your receipt or else your daughter loses a finger, you better have voted for the guy we told you to vote for'
Understand now?
I don't understand people that don't undertand.
Your approach would mean that the votes in the favourable district would not be counted because the ink used on the ballots would not be readable (i.e. they would show up as blank).
The original approach is correct.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Texas Safe Voting has a video on their site of election workers talking to a Diebold sales rep. It shows just how bad off we are with current evoting initatives. My favorite quote is "I just want to make sure this machine can add. Remember, we've had machines recently that didn't add."
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
This is just too much votes, you see, the last election in Brazil had just 0.2% of problems with out electronic voting machines, most of them where replace by backup-machines, and we aren't a advance tech country like USA. Maybe simply there is something wrong with the concept here, if the house foundation is bad...
These were absentee ballots. Unless they send out mandatory pens along with the absentee ballot (which I guess they don't, since this problem arose... might not be a bad idea), there's no control over what kind of pen the voters use.
[TMB]
Ahem. This has been the case since the first such tests came out in the late 80-es. Nothing has changed ever since. This is also the reason why we used to be issued pencils along with the test papers for some classes in college 15 years ago. Actually the type of pensil also matters. It should be 2B. F and H can be misread as well.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
That's funny, not every optically scanned test I have taken has required a pencil. Some scanners can read ink.
Such as the one used at the polling site....
Near as I can tell it was a combination of a number of things:
1. poor calibration by the site worker (noted in article)
2. poor documentation by the manufacturer and election office-
If for some reason you can't just turn it on and use it there had better be directions and in this case extremely complete (which obviously weren't)
3. poor design-yes poor design-
Look it's an optical reader, yes?no? it reads marks on paper made in circles (I assume), in theory it should read marks in any color of any composition of the proper orientation that are placed in those circles.
As the person using the machine or setting it up I don't really care what type of pen is used and probably wouldn't give it a second thought. Heck, make it calibrate automatically for all supported ink types, with an election site supervisor checking with a supplied card...
Requiring a specific pen/pencil just adds another failure point. Make the machine idiot proof. It's for an election. Money really isn't an object here folks.
This problem may be hard but it isn't rocket science...
here in France, we don't use no pen (in fact, writing on the ballot nullifies it).
you just select one out of a handful of papers and put that one in an envelope. simple and to the point, there's no way to cheat, nothing to interpret
Ok, I am going to start by saying that anyone that thinks e-polling/e-voting or any other kind of electronic voting system is accurate....you are an ignorant bastard. Politicians cheated in elections ever since the beginning of politics, all e-voting does is make it even easier to cheat. How many of you computer programmers wouldn't take a million dollars to move a decimal place over a few places? Having people count ballots is not as bad as people think it is...wouldn't you do it for a paycheck? It does not hurt anyone to have a paper ballot and people counting every single one just like they used to have to do. I have shared this website with you before, but here it is again: Black Box Voting .
I have donated money to this lady on more than one occasion. She has evidence of about seven or eight states that have FOR A FACT cheated or purposely screwed with the results and she is raising money to take every person responsible for it to court. She is what some (including me) may call a patriot. She is fighting a war that is just beginning between this power hungry government of ours and the people. There will be a new civil war some day soon, I just hope the people are on the right side and see all the facts. I bid you all good day....peace
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05