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Florida Electronic Voting Machines Crash

Posted by michael on from the blue-screen-of-election-disaster dept.

crash24601 writes "For a dose of one of our favorite topics, abcnews.com is carrying the story of a tabulation machine for electronic voting crashing during testing. Naturally, this happened in Florida. They are also carrying the article Is E-Voting Fundamentally Flawed? Though mostly a lightweight rehash of issues brought up before, it is good to see it published from a mainstream source."

5 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Called on account of rain... by lynx_user_abroad · · Score: 5, Funny
    From the article:

    She said she suspected Hurricane Jeanne, which struck in September, may have zapped electricity and air conditioning to the room where the server was stored, causing temperatures to soar to 90 degrees or more and possibly causing the crash. The storm wiped out power to nearly 1.3 million homes and businesses throughout Florida.

    So, this election may be postponed on account of rain?

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    The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.

  2. Well... by Jesrad · · Score: 4, Funny

    Mr Feces, meet Mr Fan. Fan, this is Feces.

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    Maybe we deserve this world ?
  3. its funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful


    that Americans think that by pressing a button on a machine (that they have no idea of how it works) is democracy, digital makes the potential for corruption so easy its just too tempting an opportunity to let go

    paper voting is still used all over the world because it is the EASIEST and SAFEST
    sure it might take a week to count the votes by hand but are you in a rush ?
    its far harder to lose 2 tons of paper ballots than press a secret key combo on a computer and poof all those votes have gone without trace or record

    but hey you carry on, its a great show watching what was a free and democratic society turn into a totalitarian corrupt theocracy, perhaps when the riots start you might ask where you went wrong

  4. The voting machine didn't crash! by PatHMV · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was the machine which tabulates the votes that crashed. The actual were still safely recorded, untouched, on the counter keys (basically removable memory units) from the voting machines themselves.

  5. Open Source it! by hoggoth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a perfect example of a urgently needed technology that an Open Source solution would be great for.

    <wild-accusations>Electronic voting will *NEVER* work right as long as it is being done by companies like Diebold that are on one party or another's secret payroll.</wild-accusations>

    An open source solution would accomplish a few things:

    1) Provide a verifiably secure solution to electronic voting that would be resistant to tampering. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say the possibility of tampering with elections could degrade freedom in this country.

    2) Give Open Source's strengths the kind of publicity that reaches far beyond the current Microsoft/Linux squabbles. The majority of the public and news media has no idea what Open Source is about; But if Bill O'Reilly, John Stewart, GW Bush, and John Kerry are talking about it you can bet that tremendous numbers of people will be introduced to the ideas.

    3) Give some impressive visibility to the developers on the project. Visibility usually leads to marketability, jobs, projects, etc.

    Of course, visibility won't be great when the Diebold hitmen show up...

    Australia has some well made electronic voting running on Linux which can serve as a proof-of-concept for us Americans.

    So who's game?!

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