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Aftermath Of Failed Electronic Voting
dstates writes "The Christian Science Monitor and NPR report that failed electronic voting machines lost thousands of votes in Carteret County North Carolina, and the election for state agriculture commissioner is headed to court. A combination of human error (setting the machine to record a maximum of three thousand votes when eight thousand people voted) and a software malfunction (the machine kept accepting ballots after its memory was overloaded) resulted in the loss of 4,500 votes in an election decided by only 2,300 votes."
This was reported in the "Election Results Weirdness Continues" story, some time back.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
> A combination of human error (setting the machine to record a maximum of three thousand votes when eight thousand people voted) and a software malfunction (the machine kept accepting ballots after its memory was overloaded)
Sounds like the errors should cancel each other out.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ok, so it only recorded 3000 votes of 8000? I'd guess that would mean 5000 votes were lost, not 4500. But let's just think about those 3000 votes for now... the election was decided by 2300 votes. So that means, of the 3000 votes that got counted, 2650 were for Candidate A and 350 were for Candidate B. If Candidate A got 88% of the vote so far, isn't it somewhat silly to think that it's going to suddenly swing to Candidate B if they count the other 60% of the ballots?
A combination of human error (setting the machine to record a maximum of three thousand votes when eight thousand people voted) and a software malfunction (the machine kept accepting ballots after its memory was overloaded) resulted in the loss of 4,500 votes in an election decided by only 2,300 votes."
It was human error on the part of the those who set it up and human error on the part of election officials who decided to use a product that wasn't thoroughly tested. Someone beyond the techs that administer the machines needs to be on the hook for this. Just because the machines that failed are electronic doesn't mean that there was no negligence on the part of those that chose to use them.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Who needs more than 3000 votes?
After all this crap, isn't it time that Diebold (and similar companies) be dropped, and another one (preferably FOSS) be chosen? Or is that solution too obvious? I wonder how many more elections fall victim to stupid and/or rigged coding....
A. Why you would have a maximum number of votes for a machine AT ALL.
B. Why you would have something like a memory contraint AT ALL in these days of cheaper-than-dirt storage.
C. Why you would have either or both of A and B if you wanted a fair election.
Can someone fill me in?
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
It is obvious that Bush actually lost. I wonder what the electorial college will do.
This is just further evidence of a deeply flawed system. There is absolutely no reason that we can't have an honest and reliable election system in this country. You can do with old-fashioned paper ballots and hand-counting in the presence of scrutineers from all parties. Instead we've got a mishmash of systems, many of them untested, many with known flaws, some of them run by companies like Diebold known to be both incompetant and dishonest. We can't be sure who won this election.
I don't see the point about making a fuss over a canidate that is decided by 8,000 votes. If they don't represent that much who really cares enough to make a cort case out of it. People should pick battles more wisely and become a hippy.
D'you think it's because North Carolina was John Edwards' home state, mebbe
Except, of course, that the errors were in Bush's favor. That means it's a vicious Democratic conspiracy, natch.
Look man, I'm a Democrat because the GOP has become so jaw-droppingly criminal and almost cult-like. And don't give me any of that "they're all corrupt" BS, because when it comes to corruption, no one can hold a candle to the modern Republican party. Don't believe me? Do your own research. I did, and was as surprised as anyone at the outcome.
Yes, there are crooks on both sides of the aisle. No, it is not a 50/50 split.
When it comes to vote fraud, though, if the Democrats had any balls they'd be stringing up certain Republicans up by their scrawny fascist necks. Justice freakin' demands it.
Kerry weighs in at the last moment.
If you do the math on the machine shortages, it becomes clear that, just by fudging which precincts get more machines, and which get fewer, someone could set an arbitrary absolute cap on the number of votes a candidate could get, by forcing their strongholds to be resource-limited rather than voter-limited. A little more math shows that this effect could be sufficient to tip a close race. If you look at the distribution of the long lines and the votes in Ohio, it becomes hard not to believe that this was in fact done.
If you look at the racial pattern of the lines, it also starts to look like whoever did it was a racist jerk.
--MarkusQ
Here is some info on the voting machines used in the county.
Unilect Corportation is the manufactorer of the "Patriot Voting System" (because losing votes = being patriotic).
Interactive demo of their voting system!
Verified Voting has a Voter Information Sheet on the machine.
Disinfopedia has an article about Unilect Corporation. From this article:
The President of UniLect Corporation is Jack Gerbel, who has been actively involved in the election equipment industry since 1965. His career began in elections with IBM Corporation and then as a founder, Vice-President and Board of Directors member of Computer Election Systems (CES).
Mr. Gerbel had the distinction of personally selling and installing more election systems than any other person in the U.S.
Two major accounts that he sold and successfully installed were Cook County, Illinois and the City of Chicago.
Mr. Gerbel became Vice-President of Sales for Business Records Corporation (BRC).
So, there you have it. Background info. Side note: I live in NC and this is not the same machines that were being (these are the literal words of the poll workers) "tested" in Watauga County. And although they officially said these machines were only experimental and being tested, paper ballots were often withheld upon request and their availability was NOT posted. The Republic Party in Watauga County also refused to move polling locations onto Appalachian State University's campus, proposed by the Dem Party, although 22,000 of the 25,000 residents are students.
I'm a Republican, as are most of the people in my family, and for that matter most of the people in my state. And I don't know anyone who approves of what was done in this last election, once they are confronted with the facts. The closest is a sort of lame "well, they probably meant well" or "it must have been overly enthusiastic grunts"--but you can see in their faces that they don't buy it.
But none of them are happy about it. We were raised, I guess, with those "moral values" that everyone's talking about. And I don't recall cheating on that list, anywhere. No, I take that back. There was "Cheaters never prosper" and "If you cheat, you only cheat yourself" and "Better to die for the truth then live a lie."
But to hear the media tell it, we're all a bunch of saps that aprove of doing anything to win (When in fact we were taught "The ends don't justify the means." and "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.").
As my brother said at Thanksgiving, "I want my party back!"
--MarkusQ
If it's such a success then why are these issues still popping up? If we had an old fashion, all paper and pencil ballot, even with recounts, we would be completely finnished by now. If it is not a method of istitutional corruption - why is it so easy now? I thought eVoting was supposed to fix these "problems", not make them worse.
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
A program should always fail in a manner similar to, "Dear User, I have tried best and failed. This is what I was trying to do [insert itemized list here], this is why I failed [insert error here]. I finished what I could, and this [insert data here] is that which was leftover and I don't know what to do with. This is who you should contact. Should I try one of these [itemized list] recovery methods, start again, or give up and die? Thank you."
I'm guessing you're the programmer responsible for the endless loops of "Abort, Retry or Fail?" in DOS, where no matter which option you chose it asked the question again.
In that entire story, there's no mention of which corporation made the failed machines. There's talk of "human error", talk of "software error", but no talk of "corporate error", where a corporation sold machines that wouldn't work, didn't work, and have sent North Carolina at least into a constitutional crisis. Less than zero accountability for the corporations getting rich off the destruction of democracy.
There's also no mention of the joke that is government testing and certification of these machines. Unless the elections controllers have demonstrated proof that the machines have been tested without failure or serious vulnerability, they must assume the machines will fail. And they can't claim ignorance of the risk, compounded by the absence of mitigation in a fallback auditable record, like a paper log. So these government officials, representing the people of North Carolina, are also unaccountable for their gross malfeasance.
These people have violated the public trust in North Carolina most seriously. It's not necessary to prove they colluded to design a failed election, for their political or economic benefit. Their gross malfeasance has deprived thousands of North Carolinans their fundamental right to vote, regardless of its effect on the election, though there seems to be at least one office, Secretary of Agriculture, which is seriously damaged. The irresponsible people must be unmasked, and sent to jail for these serious crimes against the people.
--
make install -not war
All the reports just after the election claimed that these votes were lost because the machine ran out of memory. Now we're reading the explanation that someone set a max-votes limit to 3000.
...". But the slashdot abstract says "... setting the machine to record a maximum of three thousand votes ...", which conflicts with the article's explanation.
...
Are the reporters really so clueless that they don't understand the difference? Or maybe they do understand, but half of them are trying to put something over on us?
I notice that TFA's explanation is "... an exhausted poll worker failed to notice a "memory full" caption on a machine,
So which is it? Inquiring minds want to know
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
About 90% of Afghanistan is in the hands of the same warlords who held power during the Taliban years, the same ones that are currently hiding bin laden and CO., that's Republican progress for you
Iraq, once under the murderous tyrannnical despot Hussein, is on track for elections. Al Qaeda and ALL major terrorist rings are on the run.
Even the Republicans quisling PM Iyad Allawi says elections can not be held under the current conditions and that a lack of American foresight is to blame. The Replicans biggest ally in Iraq says you and they are wrong.
Go ahead and allow the left to ignore all of the good things and focus on rumours and unsubstantiated claims.
That is a perfect description of your post. Rumours and unsubstantiated. For the support of the winning party you sound worried and on the defensive (like US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan) BTW China Co-operates when it is its advantage to do so i.e. not very often and grudgingly. They work with Japan South Korea and other Asian countries far more than they do with the US, they even work with Europe more. The trend and belief among Asian countries (especially Japan and South Korea) is to work as little as possible with US companies as history has shown you end up getting shafted if you do.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.