Diebold Fails Again in San Diego

ptudor writes "An article in today's San Diego Union Tribune reveals nearly 3000 absentee ballots in the San Diego primary one month ago were miscounted. 'The miscounts occurred because multiple scanners simultaneously fed the absentee ballot data into the computer tabulation system. The large number of ballots and candidates on them overwhelmed the system. Diebold spokesman David Bear said the company has provided a software fix to the county for the new problem.' The irregularities were found in a routine post-election review." You can also read more about the problems on election day.

Comments

Well

[On Lawn]

I didn't vote in San Diego, but I am close by and did vote on a Die-Bold system. I have to admit I was tempted to go to the registrars office and vote manually or pick up an absentee ballot. Just so I could have a verifyable paper trail. Its interesting to learn that the absentee's could get messed over just as well.

I was suprised though while standing in line that the two people in front of me had absentee ballots and chose to vote via touch screen anyway.

With electronics, there will always be problems

[pholower]

Until there is a way to have two or three safety checks that are electronic, we are always going to see these problems. Have an electronic machine from one company send the vote to its database, and print a "receipt" for the vote out. Then, have they receipt scanned into a system built by a different company, and check the results. The voter can also look at the receipt and verify that is who they voted for, as well, as being double checked to veryify there are no "programming" errors.

Re:With electronics, there will always be problems

[On Lawn]

with two different companies, while this is still possible, it is much more difficult.

I was thinking about this when I was reading Federalist #51 (I've written on this in my journal which is linked in my sig). There Madison speculates that certain combinations of cause by motivations other than community threaten the rebublic more than everyone keeping after their own cause and establishing distinctive communities.

Immediately the Cola Wars come to mind, and our hopelessly two party system (read Pudge's journal about how the two party system locks out third parties). I'm not sure any number of companies can really guarantee that they don't combine against some weaker entity.

That said, more companies would probably provide more security. But probably not as much as a truely transparent and hard-tooled voting mechanism.

overloaded by 3000 votes?

[Tumbleweed]

How is it something that can handle the amount of traffic Slashdot does with duct tape & bubblegum (MySQL & Perl), yet a Diebold machine can't handle 3000 absentee ballots? Friggin' amazing. To quote Weird Al, "What kinda chip they got in there, a Dorito?"

Why are voting machines so complicated?

[bleublue]

In all this talk about electronic voting machine failures, I still don't comprehend how the process can be so complicated that it has so many failures, requires full featured OS (i.e. Windows), etc... I mean all voting is a position, list of names, select 1 or more (depending on the type of election). Couldn't this all be done with code small enough to fit on a ROM or something that would be almost impossible to tamper with? Even votes could be somehow "burned" into a write-once type of memory. Simple network adapter to transfer the results.

Re:What? $32 Million and No Checks?

[On Lawn]

Or tech support. Many machines were stuck in a wierd default state, having their firmware batteries run out for being so long in storage.

There was not adequate tech support, and many districts had techie, unauthorized voters pitching in to help get the machines up. While I'm glad for their service (they could have just walked away) I worry about how problematic that could be in the future.

Re:Real counting?

[midol]

As a Canadian voter, I recommend the system in use here. All balloting is done with a pencil on paper ballots. All ballot boxes are brought sealed to a central tally point. One Elections Canada staff member counts the ballots. Every candidate has the right to appoint one scrutineer. Any scrutineer can contest any ballot. Any member of the public is entitled to watch the ballots being counted.

I can't remember there ever being the kind of nonsense that Diebold has regularly caused.

software has no place in voting

[nickos]

The voting process demands openness and accountability, and for these reasons software cannot be used, even if it's open source. Voting must remain dependant on human countable physical ballots (or similar).

One idea I had would be as follows:
In an election with 4 candidates there would be 4 transparent tubes, each coated with an opaque wrapper. Voters would insert a coin-shaped plastic token into the cylinder representing their favourite candidate, and when the votes need to be counted the opaque wrapper would be removed to simply show which candidate had won. It's obvious, completely transparent and recounts are unnecessary because the winner should be obvious to all.

Re:Real counting?

[AKnightCowboy]

I suppose that turning things digital isn't always the best solution. These kind of issues proves that fact.

Digital doesn't mean bad, they just have a stupid buggy system. How do the SATs and other standardized testing services handle millions of those scantron sheets without problems? Instead of poking holes in a piece of paper and leaving hanging chads, have people use a friggin pencil and bubble in a box. If you don't follow the instructions and the computer can't read your bubble for whatever reason then your vote simply is discarded. Humans should not be involved in deciding who the vote was "supposed" to go to because they can be influenced.

Re:The Diebold machines are funked...

[nickos]

"I really hate to break it to you -- machines are already used to count votes made with pen and paper,"

Yes but at least you can verify the results by having a human recount the ballot papers. If you replace the physical ballot papers with electronic voting you have to trust the voting system.

Re:The Diebold machines are funked...

[Frymaster]

Yes but at least you can verify the results by having a human recount the ballot papers.

bingo! the real problem with electronic voting is:

• no backup. in many cases the "e-vote" is all there is. no paper.
• mutable format. ballots are hard to change, delete or add. little ones and zeroes are easy to change.

if you developed a data centre with no backups and 777 perms on everything, no one would trust you.

When is civil disobedience justified?

[revscat]

I have been wondering lately if phsyically damaging these machines is not justified in a system that is supposed to cherish democracy to such a high degree. Civil disobedience is justified in some cases, and I believe that the use of unverifiable electronic voting machines with known vulnerabilities is just such a case.

Remember, Americans: Bring your voter registration card, and a sledgehammer for Diebold. They are stealing our freedom to vote, the very democracy over which so much blood has been spilled, and the corrupted political process is encouraging it via awarded contracts and almost silent acquiescence.

This crosses political affiliations and affects all Americans. I strongly believe that this must be stopped it by all means necessary or we will lose the ability to collectively affect the policies of our country, no matter how small your individual voice might be. This is zealous, without a doubt, but not all zealotry is bad. "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Live free or die.

Re:Real counting?

[Roger W Moore]

Sigh... here we go again.... Est. Population (2004) of Canada: 32,000,000 Est. Population (2004) of US: 294,500,000 Area of Canada (in km^2): 9,970,610 Area of US (in km^2): 9,363,520 Canda Population Density per sq km (1997): 3 US Population Density per sq km (1997): 29 Got it?

No - the UK has almost exactly the same system as Canada (where do you think they got it from?) and likewise has seen no problems with it over the last century or so. However the UK has about twice the population density of the US (~60 million people in less than 10% of the area) and it still works (well, it did elect Blair but that can't really be blamed on the system :-)

So no excuses - you could fix it with a system that works if you wanted to!

Fix the real problems

[theEd]

What's really "funny" about this whole issue is that the voting machines are not the problem, it's the process.

1. The electoral collage needs to be abolished . At one time it may have made sense, but in today's world it's just another problem in the system. Now, some analysts have stated that the electoral college system is good because it encourages the canidates to visit less populous states. The reason, which is a bit convoluted, is that the vote of a person in those states basically counts more than a vote of a person of a "larger" state. Well that's just bull**it. Everyone's vote should count the same. I don't care if you live in a luxury apartment on fifth ave in New York or in a tent on a mountian near Missoula, MT. What happened to the "truths that we hold self-evident" like the fact that "all are created equal".
2. Any elected official should be elected by a majority, not a simple plurality. In the past three presidential elections no canidate has taken more than 50% of the popular vote. So, for the past 12 years, we have had a president in which most people did NOT vote for. Am I the only that has a problem with that? I think it's time for instant runoff voting. Now, initially I was apprehensive about IRV, not knowing the mechanics, but after I read more about IRV this is the way to go. It fixes the "problem" of spoiler candidates, like the Gore vs. Nader in 2000. It's actually quite simple, and if you look at the process, it is still possible to vote the "traditional" way. Thus, persons who don't fully utilize IRV while voting would not be at any less of a disadvantage than if they voted in a simple plurality. On top of that we are guarenteed that our officials must capture a majority of the electorate, while we only have to visit the polls once.

Re:Fix the real problems

[slothman32]

I normally wouldn't bother replying but you make two good point that shouldn't be implemented ever. The EC, I think, is even more needed now when our population is over 300 million. If it weren't there your vote would only be 1 in 300,000,000 chance of changing the outcome. With it it's less because you are more likely to change your state.

IRV should never be used and is worse than plurality. It violates the all important monotonicity principle. That means if you vote for someone they could lose. Approval is better and easier for people, dumb in general, to use.

Re:The Diebold machines are funked...

[blincoln]

You know that a sabot is that little metal band that goes around a subcaibre bullet, right? Why would I rattle that?

A "sabot" is a shoe, which is why the bullets and other projectile weapons have them.

The sabot reference in the grandparent post is to "sabotage," where workers angry over automation replacing their jobs threw their wooden shoes into the machinery to destroy it.