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4503 Electronic Votes Lost in NC

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the exited-polls dept.

ctnp writes "While it wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome, 4530 votes were lost in one North Carolina county after one machine was configured to store 3,005 votes instead of the expected 10,500. 'The machines flash a warning message when there is no more room for storing ballots. 'Evidently, this message was either ignored or overlooked,' he [Jack Gerbel, CEO of machine-providing UniLect] wrote.'"

24 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Shock! by rueger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hold on! You're surely not suggesting that those modern electronic computer machines might not work properly!

    No, this must be the sneaky terrorist attack on democracy that Bin Laden promised last week!

    --
    Three Squirrels
    1. Re:Shock! by collegeshaw · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not a shock at all in my mind. What did they expect? Everyone in the tech world KNOWS these machines were going to screw up. The worst part is that the votes were totally lost. With no audit trail, how will we ever know what the true outcome was. My thoughts, the Republicans stole the election via Diebold and other online voting machines, and we're never going to find out the true extent of it.

  2. what were they using? by my_fake_account · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What were they using? 8k memory sticks?

    I live in NC. Yes, the ballot was long this time, but it still wasn't much data per voter. I don't think there were any votes that would have taken more than three bits (and none more than four) to store the choice.

    Even if the entire ballot is stored verbatim per voter, I still don't think it would have amounted to more than one or two k per ballot.

    The storage device must be tiny. Or the ballot data must be really inefficiently laid out.

    My county uses pen and paper for voting. It's cheap and easy.

    1. Re:what were they using? by stoborrobots · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think that the problem was that they set a configuration option which allocated only a small file for storing the votes. While I agree with you that the actual file size was probably tiny, since that was put in as the hard limit on file size, that's what the system could store.

      Now what kind of idiot specifies a system where you can only store 10000 ballots? Assuming each ballot took a full 1k to store, then 10000 ballots are only 10M. Since cameras and phones carry more memory that that these days, it's reasonable to assume that the system shouldn't have been able to be configured down that small...

      --
      "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
    2. Re:what were they using? by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Funny

      *Now what kind of idiot specifies a system where you can only store 10000 ballots?*

      probably the kind of a salesman that makes the client pay per capabilities...

      "yes it's 10$ per vote".

      or they were using game&watches as storage.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:what were they using? by orkysoft · · Score: 3, Funny

      10 REM REMEMBER THIS KIND OF SHIT?
      20 REM IT'S BEEN YEARS FOR ME, BUT IT TURNS OUT I CAN STILL WRITE IT...
      30 REM THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO BIAS IN THIS POLL PROGRAM, I SWEAR TO GOD!
      40 INPUT "HOW MANY VOTES TO STORE? ", MAXVOTES
      50 DIM VOTES(MAXVOTES - 1)
      60 FOR I = 0 TO MAXVOTES - 1: VOTES(I) = 1: NEXT I
      70 CURRENTVOTE = 0
      80 REPEAT
      90 INPUT "DO YOU WANT TO VOTE FOR (1) PRESIDENT BUSH OR (2) THE FLIPFLOPPER KERRY? ", ANSWER
      100 IF ANSWER != 1 AND ANSWER != 2 THEN ANSWER = 1
      110 IF CURRENTVOTE < MAXVOTES THEN VOTES(CURRENTVOTE) = ANSWER ELSE PRINT "NOT ENOUGH ROOM TO STORE THIS VOTE!"
      120 CURRENTVOTE = CURRENTVOTE + 1
      130 GOSUB 1000 : REM DETERMINE IF ELECTION IS OVER YET
      140 UNTIL ELECTIONOVER = 1
      150 BUSHVOTES = 0 : KERRYVOTES = 0
      160 FOR I = 0 TO MAXVOTES - 1
      170 IF VOTES(I) = 1 THEN BUSHVOTES = BUSHVOTES + 1
      180 IF VOTES(I) = 2 THEN KERRYVOTES = KERRYVOTES + 1
      190 NEXT I
      200 PRINT "BUSH GOT " + BUSHVOTES + " VOTES."
      210 PRINT "KERRY GOT " + KERRYVOTES + " VOTES."
      220 PRINT "HAVE A NICE DAY!"
      230 END
      1000 REM I DON'T RECALL HOW TO GET THE TIME FROM BASIC
      1010 REM BUT THERE WERE SO MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF BASIC
      1020 REM I LIKED GFA BASIC BACK IN THE DAY...
      1030 REM NO LINE NUMBERS, ONLY ONE INSTRUCTION PER LINE
      1040 REM THIS IS JUST WRITTEN TO WHAT I IMAGINE A REALLY BASIC BASIC WOULD BE LIKE.
      1050 RETURN

      --

      I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
    4. Re:what were they using? by MarkGriz · · Score: 2, Funny

      Boole, Sheet, and Shuvler
      Attorneys at Law
      =-=-=-=-=-=-

      orkysoft
      Slashdot ID #93727
      http://slashdot.org/~orkysoft

      Re: Copyright Infringement

      Dear orkysoft

      We represent UniLect Corporation ("Unilect"), maker of the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. voting system.

      Unilect is the owner of copyrighted software relating to its electronic voting machines ("Unilect Property").

      It has recently come to our clients' attention that you appear to be in possesion of copyrighted material, in particular, copyrighted software used in our clients' voting machines.

      Further, it appears you have posted Unilect Property to the web site Slashdot.org, as witnessed here

      This posting infringes Unilect's copyrights because the Unilect Property was reproduced, placed on public display, and is being distributed from this web site without Unilect's consent, and has caused irreparable harm to Unilect.

      The purpose of this letter is to advise you of our clients' rights and to seek your agreement to the following: (1) to remove and destroy the Unilect Property contained at the web site identified in the attached chart and (2) to destroy any backup copies of the Unilect Property in your possession or under your control.

      Please confirm, in writing, that you have complied with the above requests.

      To the best of my knowledge and belief the information contained in this notification is accurate as of the time of compilation and, under penalty of perjury, I certify that I am authorized to act on behalf of Unilect.

      Our clients reserve their position insofar as costs and damages caused by infringing activity with respect to the Unilect Property. Our clients also reserve their right to seek injunctive relief to prevent further unauthorized use of Unilect Property, including reproduction, distribution, public display, or the creation of derivative works, pending your response to this letter. We suggest you contact your legal advisors to obtain legal advice as to your position.

      We await your response within 24 hours.

      Very truly yours,

      Phil F. Sheet

      --
      Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
  3. Happened in florida by moosesocks · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't look now, but something even dumber happened in florida as well.

    To summarize, since there should be no more than 32,000 people in a precinct, the machines were not configured to handle more votes than that. As a result, they counted BACKWARDS once the 32,000 person limit was reached.

    Methinks this is a buffer overflow issue (32,768 votes as opposed to the 32,000 quoted in the article). How thick can you be to design a polling system storing votes in an int...

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
    1. Re:Happened in florida by cgenman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why would you ever use a signed int in a voting machine? Obviously they should have used a much larger available counting variable, but how could someone writing the code think "Eh, maybe we'll need negatives"?

      Now that's incompetence you can count on.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
    2. Re:Happened in florida by dtfinch · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This begs a much bigger question:

      How in the hell did one voting machine take over 32000 votes? Suppose they had a 16 hour window to vote, that would mean it averaged less than 2 seconds per vote.

      Also, (short)32767+1=-32768. They shouldn't see it count backwards unless it displayed the absolute value in addition. Did the programmer for some silly reason anticipate negative values and stick an abs() in there? Or did they reinvent some wheels and write their own itoa()? No matter how it happened, wow, what amazing stupidity and/or malice.

    3. Re:Happened in florida by hab136 · · Score: 3, Informative
      How in the hell did one voting machine take over 32000 votes? Suppose they had a 16 hour window to vote, that would mean it averaged less than 2 seconds per vote.

      Read the article:

      Election officials quickly determined the problem was caused by the Unity Software that pulls together votes from five machines tabulating absentee ballots.

      In other words, they were feeding absentee ballots to 5 machines, and then the machine that added up those 5 machines' totals overflowed.

      No 16 hour time limit, as these are the mail-in votes.

  4. It gets worse. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The deeper you dig the more dirt piles up.

    Mandate
    this
    lying
    cheating
    sinners.

    1. Re:It gets worse. by geminidomino · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Think of the message being sent by insisting that Christians understand the Muslim world while at the same time telling them that they must compromise their fundamental Christian beliefs.

      Who ASKED them to compromise their beliefs? Letting gays marry doesn't FORCE them to take it in the back door. No one's FORCING them to have SAFE sex or have abortions.

      No, the Xians are being asked to get their thrice-damned noses OUT of everyone else's business. No more than that.

    2. Re:It gets worse. by demachina · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There are two sites in there that make there case based on numbers and not rabid liberal rhetoric. I agree the rhetoric in some of them hurt the case.

      The most striking conclusions:

      The exit polls were consistently wrong only in major swing states and only in Kerry's favor. That is still the most damning indicator the election was stolen. If you are stealing elections exit polls are always the biggest obstacle. Since the Republican's started seizing power the exit polls just started to completely go to hell. They are polls and they have a margin of error but they are far and away the most accurate polls. Exit polls predicted Gore a winner in 2000 which is maybe not that conclusive. But in 2002 the whole system mysteriously cratered and was completely gutted. In 2004 the exit polls showed Kerry winning, then in the evening the system crashes for more than an hour and then when everyone wakes up in the morning and the exit polls magically precisely match the official returns. I have to say the Republicans and Karl Rove almost deserve power because they are maniacal geniuses.

      The chart of Florida results tends to suggest whomever stole the election used a feint. Everyone thought the paperless touch screens were where it was going to be stolen and it appears they stole it using optical scan machines instead. The touch screen machines show believable gains for both Democrats and Republicans. The touch screens show massive increases in Republicans and dramatic drops in Democrats. Its a stretch to think that it just happens optical scanners were put in all the precincts where their was explosive Republican gains though its possible if all the rural bible thumper precincts bought optical scanners, but that is a stretch. Same thing in Ohio, everyone though it would be stolen by Diebold and evoting. But they actually switched back to punch cards and no one noticed and people are blaming evoting when it wasn't even extensively used.

      So here is the Rove guide to stealing an election:

      A. Steal it by so enough that its not close so there is no outrage, there is no hope in the losing camp, there are no recounts, everyone just gives up. Its a balancing act because you have to steal it by just enough, because to much might set off alarm bells. It looks like they tried to steal New Hampshire but didn't do it by enough so Kerry still ones, it appears New Hampshire swung harder than expected to Kerry.

      B. You must stick a knife in the back of exit polls because they always point to places where the election was rigged. Again in 2002 the whole system went down and this time the results showed a stolen election and the Republicans just coerced the people doing them to correct them so they matched the rigged election.

      C. Only steal the election in the swing states. As long as all the very red states stay red and the blue states stay blue everyone thinks everything is OK. The swing states are close enough everyone expects them to swing so when they do no one cares. It looks like Florida got carried away and was swung by enough to be suspicious but not real suspicious.

      D. Use a feint. Push paperless electronic voting and stoke controversy over it. Get everyone to look at it and focus on it. Then steal the election in precincts using optical scanners and hanging chads(the old fashioned way by spoiling cards in minority districts). Punch cards are easy to tamper, you just have to pop out a second chad making it a double vote. Everyone starts screaming evoting stole the election and then when you look there you see it wasn't stolen in the evoting precincts and look like an ass. No one thinks to look at the optical scanners and punch card precincts which a couple of the people in the parent post's links did.

      It looks to have been a brilliant work of art. You almost have to stand back and admire it and then you wake up and realize you are for all practical purposes in a dictatorship.

      --
      @de_machina
  5. what more do you expect? by applegoddess · · Score: 2, Interesting

    everyone knew something like this would happen. its starting to be known. god (that i dont believe in) knows what's going to happen next...a few thousand more votes lost, especially in important swing states?

    If we only hear about the minor problems, how many other problems are we not in the know about?

    I'm not one who worships conspiracy theories, but what http://blackboxvoting.org/ talks about is entirely possible, on both small and large scales.
    Actually, I don't want to know. Better to get the four years out of the way and then elect a more progressive president. (Sorry, but I'm a bit on the liberal side, seeing as how I'm almost everything that current republicans seem to despise and refuse to give rights to.)

  6. Well this stuff is gonna continue. by infonography · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I saw a pic of ballots being loaded into a truck with a Bush 2004 sticker on the back.

    In other news, I talked to a guy on the internets that heard from someone else that there was a website that had a 2nd hand account of really nasty about what's his name. And when they went back the site was mysteriously gone.

    Wait there, I think there is helicoptor above my house.

    Time passes.

    I heard it and it was too dark to see, guess it must have been one of those black helicopters.

    You know what Stuart? I like you. You're not like the other people here
    in the trailer park. Oh no, don't get me wrong, they're fine people, good
    Americans. But they're content to sit back, maybe watch a little Mork and
    Mindy on channel 57. Maybe kick back a cool Coors 16-ouncer. They're
    good fine people, Stuart. But they don't know what the queers are doing
    to the soil.

    You know that Johnny Werzner kid - the kid who delivers papers in the
    neighborhood? He's a fine kid. Some of the neighbors say he smokes
    crack, but I don't believe it. Anyway, for his 10th birthday, all he
    wanted was a burrow owl, just like his old man. "Dad, get me a burrow
    owl. I'll never ask for anything else as long as I live". So the guy
    breaks down and buys him a burrow owl. Anyway at 10:30 the other night I
    go out into my yard and there's the Werzner kid looking up in the tree. I
    said, "What are you looking for?" He said, "I'm looking for my burrow
    owl." I say, "Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! Everybody knows that a
    burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground! Why the hell do you think they
    call it a burrow owl, anyway?!" Now Stuart, do you think a kid like that
    is gonna know what the queers are doing to the soil?

    I first became aware of this, about 10 years ago, the summer my oldest boy
    Bill Jr. died. You know that carnival that comes to town every year?
    Well this year it came with a ride called the Mixer. The man said "Keep
    your head and arms inside the mixer at all times." But Bill Jr., he was a
    daredevil, just like his old man. He was leaning out saying, "Hey
    everybody! Look at me, look at me!" POW! He was decapitated. They found
    his head over by the snowcone concession. A few days after that, I open
    up the mail and there's a pamphlet in there, from Pueblo, Colorado. And
    it's addressed to Bill Jr. And it's entitled, "Do you know what the
    queers are doing to our soil?"

    Now Stuart, if you look at the soil around any large U.S. city with a big
    underground homosexual population - Des Moines, Iowa, perfect example.
    Look at the soil around Des Moines, Stuart. You can't build on it, you
    can't grow anything in it. The government says it's due to poor farming.
    But I know what's really going on, Stuart. I know it's the queers.
    They're in it with the aliens. They're building landing strips for gay
    Martians. I swear to God.

    You know what Stuart, I like you. You're not like the other people, here
    in the trailer park.

    Thanks to the Dead Milkmen, And since you read this all the way to the end, I should mention I am pro-kerry. It's over folks, they won this round.

    --
    Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
  7. 4530? That's nothing. by BortQ · · Score: 4, Funny
    4530 is nothing compared to all the votes that I knocked off when I hacked that Florida machine. You'd think they would get suspicious if you stay in the booth for sooo long, but I guess they are used to the slow-pokes in the sunshine state.

    Anyway, thanks /. for giving me all the info about evoting fraud that I needed before the election. I was expecting for it not to work, but the machines are dead fuckin simple.

    God bless America, and my h4xxor 5killz 2.

    --

    A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
  8. A deeper problem? by xenocide2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Everyone was afraid of what would happen if things went blatantly wrong. We appear to have avoided that malady. But there was always the question, how will we know if they've tampered with it? The answer was a meek "Well, the exit polls will keep the ballots true."

    And today we see the exit polls distinctly differing from the actual counts, and collectively sigh that our nation won't go through the same disaster it did four years ago. If we can't trust the exit polls, why can we trust the voting machines?

    --
    I Browse at +4 Flamebait

    Open Source Sysadmin

  9. "Evidently, this message was either ignored or..." by metalpet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How about:

    "Evidently, our voting system was so poorly designed we didn't bother to prevent people from using it once the system knew it couldn't store any new vote."

    The more I read about those voting machines, the more 2 possibilities come into focus:
    - The field of voting machine design and development attracts the dumbest people in the country, or
    - The glaring design flaws have been inserted purposefully, to achieve plausible deniability.

    To explain the 2d one a bit, if a system appears to have a sound design, yet it is somehow exposed that the votes stored by that system were manipulated, the focus will quickly go toward the people in control of the system.
    On the other hand, if the current designs happen to miscount votes, it may be a local nerd that happened to carry a few smartcards in his pocket, it may be some foreign hacker that was wardialing random US numbers using carded VoIP accounts and found a voting system that picked up, or it may just be the system crumbling under the weight of its own ineptitude, among 20 other possible reasons.
    Since each of those scenarios is more likely than a global conspiracy scenario, Occam's razor ends up providing a nice layer of protection.

    Of course this is silly. The first explanation is the correct one.
    Diebold as a collective entity is stupid. Unilect is stupid. W is stupid.
    Let's all point our fingers and laugh at them.

  10. Bad design? by spiff42 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Isn't it a design flaw if the machine acceps several thousand votes and dosn't display the warning until after the vote has been committed. Why not make it impossible to input a new vote once the limit has been reached? In that case it would not be possible to overlook or ignore the flashing message.

    Of course I live in a country where we are still using pen and paper. Also, I guess we would have a more difficult task of creating a UI for electronic voting, since we have 10+parties and personal votes with several candidates per party.

    Anyway, congrats to the winners, although I would rather have seen Kerry as your president.

    /Spiff

  11. Re:The truth is: It doesn't matter. by TiggsPanther · · Score: 3, Informative

    In this case the /. summary (at least) isn't implying that the lost votes would have changed who won. And that's not really the issue in hand.

    No, regardless of whether the votes would have made a difference or not it's bloody worrying that such an error was overlooked. If these machines become more and more used and the operators ignore messages like this routinely then next time (whether in the US, UK, or anywhere else) it might well be a significant difference lost.

    --
    Tiggs
    "120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
  12. Re:The truth is: It doesn't matter. by EzInKy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Religious morons in the hick states...

    Hmmm...the Republicans called those religious "morons" their friends. Yep, that's why we lost all right.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  13. 4503 votes lost, 3647 gained... by Rob+Simpson · · Score: 2, Funny
    ...in Franklin County, Gahanna 1-B. (from kos)

    Franklin County, OH: Gahanna 1-B Precinct
    638 TOTAL BALLOTS CAST

    US Senator:
    Fingerhut (D) - 167 votes
    Voinovich (R) - 300 votes

    US President:
    Kerry (D) - 260 votes
    Bush (R) - 4,258 votes

    Hmmm...

  14. some unverified statistical data. by jyang · · Score: 3, Interesting

    following post is from http://www.democraticunderground.com/

    Just for example:

    Franklin County. 77.3% of voters registered Dems. Only 15.9% registered Reps. 58.5% of the votes reported FOR BUSH???

    Holmes County. 72.7% of voters registered Dems. Only 21.3% registered Reps. 77% of the votes reported FOR BUSH???

    Calhoun County. 82.4% of voters registered Dems. Only 11.9% registered Reps. 63.4% of the votes reported FOR BUSH???

    See the data in following links.
    http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm
    http://ustogether.org/election04/florida_vote_pa tt .htm

    --
    --- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.