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."

Comments

Go Boston Tea Party on em

[revscat]

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.

Re:Go Boston Tea Party on em

[Dachannien]

They're a blatant means for whoever, Republicans in this case, to disenfranchise millions of voters and skew the election.

It's doubtful that there's a conspiracy to get these voting machines to record votes for one candidate over the other. In fact, the article mentions that complaints have rolled in for members of both major parties. But everyone should get out their tin foil hats, just in case.

Refuse to use them.

This is the correct answer. All the rest of those suggestions are criminal acts of vandalism (and probably of election tampering, as well) that ultimately disenfranchise every other person who used the machine before you took a sledge to it.

Re:Go Boston Tea Party on em

[crmartin]

I'll tell you a little secret -- not much of a secret -- about this. If the machine is clearly showing the check mark going wrong, it's a bug, not a conscious attempt to manipulate the vote.

A long time ago I was a Republican election judge in a Democratic machine county. We were using the punched-card ballots, which get an undeserved bad rap -- they have a lower proportion of bad ballots than the traditional paper ballot.

However, that year the machine candidate for the House was 3000 votes (about 10 percent) behind after 90 percent of the votes were counted.

The Election Commission discovered "computer problems". There's a delay, and afterwards -- voila! -- the votes are re-run and it turns out that the machine candidate has the big margin.

The point? It's not the machines you have to trust: it's the County Election Commission you have to trust.

Human interface guidelines for voting machines.

[Black Parrot]

1. Whatever happens, blame the user.
2. If that doesn't fix the problem, see #1.

Misaligned Touchscreens

[NotoriousQ]

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.

Re:Misaligned Touchscreens

[rtaylor]

This looks to be nothing more than misaligned touchscreens. The main question is "Are they misaligned on purpose?"

A better question would be to ask why the order isn't randomized for each new voter?

Re:Misaligned Touchscreens

[yasth]

Because as I recall the order that the canidates are listed is governed by laws. Old laws, that have not been updated. In many cases random order is used, but it is generally required by law to be done at a public event with all party members invited. Also there are much greater dangers of hiding something into the code when dealing with random ordering.

the real problem

[illuminatedwax]

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

Re:phr1: Idiot or troll?

[!ucif3r]

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'.

Touchscreen vs. Optical Scan

[nadador]

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.