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New Mexico Touchscreen Voting Problems
phr1 writes "The
Albuquerque Journal reports yet more hassles with electronic voting machines.
Early voters pressing the Kerry button have repeatedly found the machine instead putting a check mark next to 'Bush'. The operators of course say it's the voters' fault. It would be just too unfortunate if the machines happened to systematically favor one candidate over the other, heh, heh."
Destroy the fucking things. They're a blatant means for whoever, Republicans in this case, to disenfranchise millions of voters and skew the election. Break them. Make them not work. Refuse to use them, kick out the plug, tip it over. Take a big magnet to them, sledgehammer, shotgun, whatever.
Untold numbers of our ancestors have DIED to bring us the right to vote. Such measures as I am suggesting here are no more out of bounds than is locking away a violent criminal.
Take them down. Justice demands it. I paid for it with my tax dollars, and I do NOT care.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This looks to be nothing more than misaligned touchscreens. The main question is "Are they misaligned on purpose?"
And why won't someone realign them.
badness 10000
It's too bad all this energy isn't be directed at trying to correct the problems and fraud caused by paper ballots.
Punching extra holes in a punchcard, or filling in a bubble with a pencil is the easiest thing in the world.
Or how about simply lying about the numbers when you call to report them to the supervisors running the election?
Yes, it really is done that way is many places.
Okay, so you don't trust programmers writing voting software. But how then can you trust all these other people in the chain? What makes you think they're honest?
What about ballots mailed in? How do you know they even make it through the post office? How do the people counting these ballots even know it was you that really sent it? How do they know you're even a real person and not Fido T. Dog?
Vote fraud is real, and it goes way beyond miscalibrated touch screens.
The real problem here is not any attempt of voter fraud - it's the goddamn things not working correctly and the official blaming it on the users. It's hilarious to hear his excuses: "they're hitting their palms! they're not doing it right!!!" I've had a problem with many touch screens before, usually depending on the angle at which you view the screen. If you're a different height than the person who calibrates it, and the options are close enough together, it'll basicially shift the whole ballot up or down.
The real question is: why the hell did they use touch screens when they could have made a simple system with actual buttons? And why did they decide that this was the year that we must test our electronic voting machines, I guess because they were sick of guessing whether a dimple in the card meant a vote? The whole thing smacks of the disgusting trend in our country: we'd rather be certain than right. If you think there's any system which won't confuse or provide difficulty for seniors, you clearly have never had a grandmother.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Every time there's a vote "problem" the principles try to find a way to make voting easier, which they usually interpret as more effortless. So in South Florida, they go from punch-card paper ballots to video terminals, which is supposed to require even less effort because the problem is incorrectly diagnosed as people being unable to punch a hole in a thin sheet of paper even under the circumstance that the hole was pre-weakened.
So now we start seeing problems with screen registration and we're suprised? Now it's even EASIER to vote WRONG! On a side note, after hundreds of people touching these things, they're gonna get really greasy and gross. Is someone going to wipe the screen after each user?
What we need is a system that makes voting deliberate. Maybe have people write the full name or something, spell out yes or no on referendums, etc. Maybe have some anonymous system for voters to check their own votes after the election to make sure they are recorded correctly.
What we don't need is more "easy voting" schemes that a light breeze could influnce.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Finally somebody brings this up. To a Western European, that's one disturbing fact, along with the police, firefigthers and non-elected public officials endorsing a candidate and the public voting for judges (isn't the law supposed to be non-partisan?) and police chiefs.
And of course, the most disturbing fact is that active military people are used during political rallies. In France at least, police and military personel have a "devoir de reserve", meaning that they have the duty to keep their political views to themselves and you would not see military personel clapping during a political meeting or any official function. In fact, they wouldn't even be allowed at a political meeting in uniform but could attend in civilian clothes. This brings the question: how are those troups selected for the meetings? Is it "voluntary" or do they have to follow the political view of their platoon/division leader?
Pot calling kettle black? You claim one-sidedness, yet state that "many" people had the opposite problem. In what world does the number "3" constitute many? A "few" or maybe stretching the point to say "several". "Many" may be a relative term, but it's disingenuous to use it to describe a total of 3 voters in a whole county.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
3) The Rebuplicans voting didn't actually have any problems and so there were no voters to interview abotu it and the woman they interviewed simply defended the machines by saying people were making the mistakes and that it was happening to everyone. I love how Bush supporters call any news that could possibly be construed as negative towards Bush or the Republicans 'propaganda', but their candidate lying to the country and the world is just a 'mistake'.
"Take that Lisa's beliefs!" - Homer Simpson
I am a registered Green, and I'd like to see more access for third parties. I think we need to clean up the Constitution so that we're all guaranteed one vote, with equal access to that vote (that right is not there now.) We need federal standards for all elections, and all states/localities must conform to those standards. Yes, this will require more civil servants, but I'd be willing to pay to ensure that our elections are fair and open. They really have never been like that.
Point of order - if you read the article, its about voters in Bernalillo County (where Albuquerque is) and Sandoval County, in New Mexico, not Arizona.
Here in Southern Arizona, we have optical scan ballots, which the best of all worlds. I vote with a pen, a computer scans it, and if there's a question about a recount, a human can go back and look at what I marked on my ballot.
Are there any arguments for touchscreens over optical scan ballots? I can't think of any.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.