North Carolina May Redo State Election

goombah99 writes "The North Carolina Observer reports that due to failure of computerized voting system to properly record votes after its memory cards filled North Carolina may have to redo the November 2 statewide election. They believe 4400 votes were lost and from this have decided that only the State Ag commissioner race must be re-run. Still it's going to cost them a lot, indeed its going to cost them about the same price as 1000 new voting machines (3 million dollars) , or about $750 for every lost vote. Guess they wont be able to afford a paper trail system now."

Comments

Vindicated

[schlach]

I feel that this is going to make a lot of us look a little less paranoid. I've been telling people for years about how bad it is, some of them have been interested, but it's so easy for people in this country to kind of roll their eyes and insist that everything will always work and everyone will play by the rules, because they wouldn't let it happen any other way.

We can use this as an example of just one of the many problems on Nov. 2, and if they end up doing a new election, how costly it is to make mistakes or use untrustworthy technologies in voting. Then segue to Florida and Ohio...

What kind of idiot engineer

[the_skywise]

Designs a machine to continue to receive and process votes even when such votes can't be stored!?!?

Does that REALLY have to be spelled out in the design document? (And was it?)

I like honesty

[adamh526]

Jack Gerbel, president of the California company, said in response to the letters that the machine was set incorrectly to store too few votes. He called the problem "a mistake of omission" on the part of a UniLect software engineer. But he said that a warning message should have appeared on the machine when it was full.

At least these guys can come out say what went wrong. Do we have any statement yet from Diebold or ES&S? Forgive me for asking, but how hard is it to count votes? This isn't the 80's anymore - hardware is cheap. I'm having a hard time figuring out why storage is apparently such an issue here. I can't remember the last time an ATM machine forgot/lost my PIN number. Powerball machines leave adequate paper trails. Come on.

Maybe the recounts in New Hampshire and Ohio will shed some light on the issue.

Re:I wonder...

[Golias]

A state agriculture commissioner election do-over, not on Election Day, when there is no election for President or any other high office going on at the same time?

Don't worry. 17 people will show up, all relatives of one candidate or the other. I think they will find a way to get it done.

What effect will this have?

[BandwidthHog]

Municipalities no doubt *hate* to have to redo an election. So I'm sure the result of this snafu will be to ensure that either, A) This sort of fuckup of our votes never happens again, or 2) They can't be compelled to redo an election the next time this sort of fuckup of our votes happens.

Anybody wanna take a guess at which of these outcomes is vastly more likely than the other?

Re:If I were North Carolina

[goombah99]

I have read elsehwere the company makes two models a 3016 vote model and a 10,000 vote model. The county bought the cheaper ones. Thus presumbably they cant sue because they were aware of the different machine types and since they had the option to contact for more capacity. On the other hand they could sue for the sloppy inadequate warning system, but it might be hard to win. My Isuzu does not have a sign saying it may lose control if I drove it 120 miles per hour but it probably would.

Re:Media forbidden from reporting on this

[squiggleslash]

# That the exit polls were WRONG...(remember - they have been used for over a decade and considered reliable)

Exit polls have never really been considered that reliable, especially not for close elections. With a nearly 52% against slightly under 49% split in the electorate, this was undoubtedly a close election.

# That Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning OH, FL were WRONG. He was within a less than 1/2 % point margin of error in his 2000 final poll and previous polls for other elections.

Again, it's a close election, and just because Zogby was very close last time doesn't mean he's going to be that close this time. Remember, we're talking about a 3.5% difference between the results and what Zogby predicted. That's not unreasonable. I'd be pretty pleased if I was Zogby right now.

# That Harris Poll last minute polling for Kerry was WRONG. They were also within a 1/2% point margin of error in their 2000 final poll.

See above. Same principle as for Zogby. It was a close election.

# The Incumbent Rule #I (that undecideds primarily break at the end for the challenger)was WRONG.

It isn't a rule, it's just a trend, and can be affected by many factors. The conservatives ran a pretty effective smear campaign against Kerry that damaged his reputation. The Bush team ran a campaign to raise people's fears about terror, lied and exaggerated Kerry's record on these issues, and did so effectively. This would have had a significant effect on undecideds.

# The 50% Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling)

Again, this isn't a rule, merely a trend. Right wingers routinely encourage supporters to lie about who they've going to vote for, just to screw with opinion polls.

# The Approval Rating Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election)

The ARR isn't a rule, and if it was, it would be completely insane. You'd expect the candidate with the highest approval rating to win. Charles Manson isn't going to be elected president, regardless of the approval rating of the candidate he's running against.

Kerry should have won. He was a great candidate. But he was the target of a concerted smear campaign, he neither defended himself strongly enough nor attacked Bush on the main issues that effects Bush's credibility. So it's not inconceivable that he was seen as the worst of two evils.

# That Journalist Greg Palast was WRONG when he said that even before the election, 1 million votes were stolen from Kerry. He was the ONLY reporter to break the fact that 90,000 Florida blacks were disnfranchised in 2000.

This has little to do with anything. It was a close election, but Bush won by more than a million votes.

# That it was just a COINCIDENCE that the exit polls were CORRECT where there WAS a PAPER TRAIL and INCORRECT (+5% for Bush) where there was NO PAPER TRAIL.

I'd have thought that was a smoking gun too, except that one of the most unpleasant aspects of US politics is that the technology provided to people to vote usually varies widely from county to county based upon the people who live there. Poorer areas are more likely to have cheaper or older systems. Rednecks will want one thing, concerned liberals another. It is highly likely that the exit polls were affected not by the technologies in use but by the people being asked the questions.

# That the surge in new young voters had NO positive effect for Kerry, even though it was the largest number of youth voters 18-29 ever and a huge jump from 2000 and they were over 55% in favor of Kerry.

No, the youth vote has been taken into account. Nobody is disputing the above. It just wasn't enough. There was a strong conservative christian turn-out.

#

Ag Commissioner in NC --is-- an imporant race

[oldosadmin]

For those who don't remember, our previous (elected) Ag commissioner, Meg Scott Phipps, is now is the Federal Pen for doing some bad things. Ag Commissisoner does a lot of stuff in North Carolina, and if the republicans win it, it'd be a big upset.

I'll gladly vote again.

Re:A bunch of nerds demand . . .Paper?

[hey!]

I'm confused. What is the advantage of paper? Everyone keeps saying "OH, it's necessary," but why?

Because what is being mesaured is the voter's intent. Paper as an audit mechanism would confirm to the voter that his intent was properly recorded, at least for puroposes of auditing.

If the voting machine spits out a piece of paper the voter gives to some random person, does that make the voting process any more secure?


yes.

The paper doesn't identify them, but they could look at the piece of paper and know what they punched and somehow find voter fraud? Then, they can feel safe that this piece of paper won't change, and the random person will put the paper with no hanging chads in the ballot box and not stuff the ballot.

The ballot box is of course sealed, and the voter puts his paper in the box. The subsequent security requires physical security and chain of custody documentation, but so would electronic methods, so paper represents and upper limit on the acheivable security.


What if you gave the precinct worker a CDWORM? would that be the same?

It would be worlds better than an access database on a hard drive, but still would not give the voter proof that the audit mechanism reflects his intent.

You could still give it to the random worker, and then you could even put your name on your ballot, but then you can't *see* what you gave the random worker.

You are laboring under a misconception. In no case should a ballot be handed to a worker. It should be put in a sealed ballot box which is opened only under certain security procedures.

Of course, you can't see the holes you punched, but after the paper comes out of the ballot it's pretty much greek anyway.

Well, punch card machines are a piece of shit, no doubt. Optical scan are better.

Somehow I suspect that the error in electronic voting will be far better than the manual processes.

The issue is not error, but auditability. Scientifically your statement is meaningless, because there is no way to verify what the voter's intent was.

Geez, if you don't believe that, why are you reading slashdot! Or why are you a techie! Get a new profession.

I am techie because I understand technology and its applications. Paper is a technology too, you know.