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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."
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!"
I think you're missing the point... If that many votes weren't counted, there is something very very wrong with the system. Who cares who had more votes in the first XX% of voters who showed up? Fix the problem, don't argue semantics.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
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
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.
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
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
Are you on crack? That list is all well and good, but how conveniently you ignore Bill Clinton. The guy got a blowjob and lied about it so that his wife wouldn't find out. Impeachment was too soft a punishment for such a criminal act.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
You do realize that this was a statewide election and that the problems happened at a single polling station in a single county (out of 100), right? ~2.5 million North Carolinians voted for President, and I would assume that about that number voted in this race as well. so 2300 votes is a margin of less than 0.1%. That is a pretty close race.
I don't really have a dog in this race, despite being from NC, but it seems to me ($0.02) that they should only repoll the ~4500 people whose votes were lost. Rather than letting the candidates affect the outcome by campaigning to people who didn't bother to vote the first time. If only the lost votes are repolled, the results should be pretty similar to what they would have been if the votes had not been lost.
Oh, and since you were nit-picking, when you only have 1 sig-fig, 8000-3000=5000 doesn't mean that the answer isn't actually closer to 4500.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!