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Florida E-Voting Machine Fails
cmason32 writes "An optical voting machine memory card failed earlier today in Daytona Beach, Florida, sending election officials scrambling to secure the 13,000 paper receipts. Without the paper ballots, all 13,000 votes would have been lost. Considering how close some predict this election to be, losing that many ballots would be catastrophic. Let's hope that we won't see any more of this in the next 24 hours, and that these problems are fixed before 2006."
The title of this article may be misleading for those who equate "e-voting" with "touchscreen machines."
The machine that failed was an optical scan machine. This is like a scantron for school exams; it's the type we use here in Arizona. You fill in little arrows and it reads which ones are darkened. There are still paper ballots that go into a lock box under the machine.
Personally, I don't think this is "e-voting" at all and that the title is just plain wrong, but since optical scan machines do, indeed, use electrons, I suppose it's arguable.
I live in Brevard county, which is just south of the county in question. The machine that failed optically scans the ballots just like a scan-tron machine does (we have the same type in Brevard county). Voters fill in bubbles for the candidates they want, and the machine scans and counts the votes. The ballots are saved for just such a problem. Honestly, I don't know why all the electronic voting isn't like this. It's incredibly simple and efficient.
As to whether more problems like this will occur that will actually lose votes, I hope it does. I hope thousands of votes are lost and that the outcome is affected. That's the only way we'll be able to get rid of the paperless voting machines once and for all.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Seriously, slashdot hasn't been working right all morning.
/. editors bitch about Diebold trying to cover up and ignore defects in the software...
And the
I told you so?
What about the fallout from this? Who's liable? Can we sue companies like Diebold (or whatever manufacturer created this particular machine) for this sort thing?
ABC News has a continuously-updated list of irregularities from around the country.
On the radio this morning, I heard something about a couple thousand votes already present on some electronic voting machines in Philadelphia before the poll workers arrived in the morning. But I can't find any stories about it online. Does anyone have any more information on this?
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
the good news is that there is paper trail. It can be secured, and it can be recounted.
It also shows the importance of spot checking paper trails. What if this error had not been so blaringly obvious? Who would ever know. Since its not routine practice (its illegal) to recount paper ballots there would not be any way to know.
hence we need paper trails and we need to spot check them.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, hell. Might as well not have elections at all, just phone up 15 or 20 people and see who they want.
Regardless of the type of voting machine (optical readers, Diebold, or others), I'm still concerned about lost votes. I half-wanted to use the provisional ballot this morning, but when I asked the voting "official" about a paper ballot, she looked at me like I was crazy and said "we don't have any paper ballots here." Having untrained voting officials is going to bugger up this election as well.
Nothing but the finest in meaningless drivel
but that's were the logic ends.
first let's consider the statistical fluctuations that might be present in 13,000 votes chosen at random from a larger set. If the votes were 50:50 for either candidate then in the variance of 13,000 cast ballots the outcome would be about fluctuate by 50 votes, or a difference bewteen the two candidates of 100 votes. That's the average deviation from the true average the actual deviation would be much higher. If more than one candidate is running, lets say nader is getting 10% of the votes, then the statistical fluctuation in naders total would be about 32 votes with those missing votes not equaly distributed among the other candidates.
Second, this is one precint in one county in florida. it's literally an island. One shoul dave ZERO expectation that its average demographics and voting pattern represents the state average.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
For those considering casting their vote for the lesser of two evils, check out Inverse vote pairing.
Find a family member or friend who would cancel out your lesser evil vote. Make a deal with them to both vote third party. You get to take a vote AWAY from your greater evil, and the third paties get two votes. If enough people did this when the candidates suck perhaps we'd have REAL debates?
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
The reason is that those machines are no longer being produced. Worse than that, parts for them are no longer being produced. Bad enough yet? How about this: the company went out of business about 25 years ago. If anything ever breaks, the county calls up a local machine shop to replace them ... and special orders like that can be pricey (I have a friend who's the GM of such a shop).
;)
That would be the reason that a) those machines are not becoming more widespread and b) PA is thinking about phasing them out.
Besides, mechanical vote counting machines just aren't 1337 enough for this day and age.
(I live in the Pittsburgh area and my mom volunteers at the polls in my district, so she got to learn this stuff.)
BTW: The machine doesn't actually record the votes on paper, I think. My mom said that there's a readout on the back (think car odometer) and a roll of paper for the write-in votes. The pollworkers have to unlock and open up the machines at the end of the day, all read the numbers off (so that everyone knows no one's cheating), total the several machines at each polling station, and then fill out some paperwork to be taken to the county courthouse.
Just another local's opinion.
--0x4a6d74
Moreover it does no good to have voter verified paper trails in your own precint if florida or california lacks them. That paper trail only secures your one vote. You want everyone elses secure too as errors elsewhere swamp your measly vote.
So rant to the persons who could actually do something about this: the head of NASED the organization that sets voting machine standards is Denise Lamb and the head of the National Association of Secretaries of state is Rebecca Vigil-giron. Tell them you are a professional programmer and give them your candid opinion about the need for voter verified paper trails. Currently they are outspoken in nation wide advocacy agains adding paper trails to touch screen voting.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
News for the programmers of that system- volitile memory may not be the best place to buffer 13,000 scanned ballots- you should be writing to disk after every scan.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Remember that the differences came down to just a few hundred votes in some states during the 2000 elections.
Also remember that the level of support a canidate expects to recieve is going to very widely from county to county, and even polling place to polling place. If the election is anything like 2000, reducing the number of votes cast by even 5% at even a dozen polling places will change the outcome of elections.
Random errors like this have the potential to spoil the entire election, and the immediate effect would be devestating.
On the other hand, if we make it through these elections without documented random errors destroying the entire process, we have a bigger problem to worry about. Both canidates have spent millions of dollars to determine exactly which counties and polling places matter to them the most. And, a major public strategy of both campaigns this year is to employ armies of lawyers and campaign staffers to increase the "friction" at the small handful of polling locations that are unfavorable to their campaign. Simultaneously, both parties are working furiously to lubricate the polling locations that are favorable to them.
People are going to prison this year for fraudulant voter registration drives designed to increase friction at a small number of polling locations. Other efforts, like the Florida felony voter list, are diabolical and almost comic-book like in their evilness.
But in the end, both canidates would probably sell their own mother to have a chance to spoil all the votes from just a dozen hand-picked voting machines. I hope that neither campaign takes positive steps to cause a voting machine to fail. But, I pray to God that if a campaign does sabotage a voting machine that they are not caught. I honestly question if the country could survive that right now.
just phone up 15 or 20 people and see who they want
Then you have to have someone reliable to call those people. I suggest Fox News, they've proven themselves to be Fair and Balanced... they would surely do a good job!
I just saw on cnn news about a woman who voted for Kerry but when she saw the screen showed her summary report it was for Bush. She called a lawyer and reviewed her selections with the election officials and it did show she selected kerry for her answers. They say it was "computer error" *Cough**bullshit**cough*
If you remove a ballot box from an area where the voting pattern is generally significantly different from the average - and most of the time, it will be - you introduce a bias. For example, by destroying a Martin County ballot box, I would be giving Kerry an advantage. By destroying a Palm Beach ballot box, I'd be giving Bush an advantage.
Daytona Beach is, if I recall correctly, in a red area of Florida. Bush can expect to have significantly more votes in that voting machine than Kerry. If 2/3 of the votes are for Bush, then we're looking at about 8667 votes for Bush, vs 4333 for Kerry, a 4334 vote difference. If the vote is anything like as close as it was last time over Florida as a whole, you can bet those 4334 votes will make a major difference.
I don't know what those percentages are in practice. What I can say is that Florida is a diverse state, and just because the margins are close over the state as a whole doesn't mean that the margins are close on a county by county basis, or especially a precinct by precinct basis.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
From TFA, emphasis added:
Members of each political party and the canvassing board must witness the recount process Tuesday.
How is this fair? When I voted this morning some positions were competitions between a Republican or Democrat and a third party, so you'd think several different parties would get called for the recount.
Does Florida not allow more than two parties to watch recounts?
Direct away from face when opening.
Let's hope that ... these problems are fixed before 2006."
Simple. Chuck machines into garbage, replace with paper ballots. Problem fixed.
Everyone who has attended public school since 1970, maybe. That leaves out a lot of voters. My parents (baby Boomers)never had scantron. My Grandparents certanly never did. My parents have since learned, my grandparents cannot. I don't mean to insult senoir citizens, but as we all get older our eyes get worse. They have problems with daily tasks that are much more important to their quality of lives that are much more embarsising than not being able to figure out scantron. So is there a better practical solution that will help the elderly/ disabled vote? I don't know. But scantron doesn't work well for them.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.