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Computer Problems Already Affecting Florida Voters
TAGmclaren writes "The Sun-Sentinel is reporting on computer glitches already affecting the election in - you guessed it - Florida. Of the 14 early voting sites that opened in Broward County on Monday morning, 9 were reporting problems. In Orlando County, the touch screens crashed. More generally, SFgate.com is keeping track of all voting issues across the country - including lawsuits and other ballot problems." Update: 10/19 03:38 GMT by T : Thanks to reader Dale J. Russell for pointing out that "there is no Orlando County. The city of Orlando, Florida resides in Orange County."
Orlando is in Orange county.
The problem from the article has to do with the poll workers being able to connect to a database housing registration lists. While it might slow things down, it's not really a significant problem. The paper lists always seem to work fine and didn't slow things down much, not sure why they can't use those. Plus you could verify the signature on the spot.
What?
Ummm....
The founding fathers were also concerned that every region had a say in the running of the country. This means that a citizen living in a sparsely populated part of the country such as Utah has more voting power in the House Of Representatives than a citizen in a densely populated state like New Jersey.
I think you mean Senate, Not the House.
You could assign senators by state population the way the house works, but then the senate would keep expanding.
And here the founding fathers gave set the Senators at two per state to specifically insure that the large states could not overule the smaller states. They were worried about the "Tyrany of the Majority". Thats why every state has the same number of votes in the senate and why the House is assigned by population.
And next time write something yourself instead of copying it off of some website whos facts are wrong.
http://mindprod.com/election.html
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
From the article:
"All 14 of the branch offices had problems with the database connection. Many of the sites had numerous voters lined up to cast their ballots.
A work-around was created by calling in each voter's name to the main Election's Office in Fort Lauderdale. Two office workers were assigned to each phone, Salas said, for a slowed verification process. The workers would plug into the database, and verify that the voter in one of the branch sites was indeed registered to vote."
Incredible that something was so poorly validated and still made it into the field. My precinct gets voter validation printed out from Motor Voter records. The DMV uses a pretty solid, fully computerized system (IBM) that has worked well for more than five years. Total time to verify I am registered? About a minute. I never wait (and I live in a densely urbanized area), step with up to the lever voting machine and my vote is recorded and verifiable.
How did places like FL fall for this sham? Being a beta user for software that was released before it was ready is one thing when it is a text document, but for VOTING? Jeezoz H. Keerist.
I've also done work in a Federal government office with purchasing power. I can see how cluster f$%^s like this can happen, because there is no ultimate responsibility and accountability for incompetence. If the sales pitch looks good and the vendor "demonstrates" the reliability of the product, no public "servant" will be held accountable. The vendor also likely got paid upon delivery and there is no recourse for going after them. The vendor, rather than getting blacklisted by the contracting office, will get to explain what when wrong and why it was God's Will or somebody else's fault.
Before anyone says that e-voting is needed because the United States presidential elections are too big to process and count manually using pen and paper, please don't forget about the recent 2004 European Parliament election, when 343,657,800 people were eligible to vote, the second-largest democratic electorate in the world after India. It was the biggest transnational direct election in history and ten new member states elected MEPs for the very first time. With total turnout 45.5% it means 156,364,299 people have voted, 48% more than in the 2000 US presidential election.
What I mean is that we all talk about e-voting essentially taking it for granted. But has anyone ever answered what is wrong with pen and paper? Is e-voting better because it is high tech? Because it is supposedly faster? Is it? Even if it is, does it justify much less transparency and security? Could anything justify any unreliability in the very process of election, the most essential fundament of democracy?
Was there anything wrong in June 13, 2004, when 156 million people voting with pen and paper elected 732 Members of the European Parliament to represents 450 million citizens? I quote those numbers to menonstrate that simple pen and paper can scale enormously. I don't think that Americans are less skilled than Europeans and cannot count paper ballots in an election on much lower scale such as the US presidential election.
These are all very important questions to answer before we start to talk about improvements to the e-voting status quo. The first question we need to ask is not "how" but "why."
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The machines aren't too fancy -- certainly not fancy enough to run bloatware like Windows. However, they follow a simple low-tech protocol that works and shut down if tampered with. And, as with all things India, they cost $200 a pop, compared to $3000 per machines in the U.S.
The U.S. election authorities can learn a lot from India's last election. Read all about it here.