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Company to Pay for Election Problems
technoid_ writes to tell us the Indiana Star reports that Election Systems & Software has agreed to pay the Indiana State Government $245,000 in addition to extra hand-on and technical support in response to problems during the May primary. From the article: "The company, which has faced similar complaints in other states, reached a settlement with Arkansas officials Monday. In that deal, ES&S pledged services, training materials and technical support but offered no payment. Jackson, the Johnson County clerk, said the company "has done a 360" since the primary. ES&S officials have been more assertive in preparing for the fall elections. The instructional materials, she said, also will help."
That headline's too long. It should have been "Company to Pay for Election". Oh wait. That's not exactly newsworthy, is it?
Where were you when the voynix came?
"Jackson, the Johnson County clerk, said the company "has done a 360" since the primary."
Translation: We've done nothing but play Xbox since the primary.
God spoke to me.
Only $245,000 to rig an election? Sounds cheap to me.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
So, they're back where they started?
Do you have ESP?
Jackson, the Johnson County clerk, said the company "has done a 360" since the primary.
So, in his opinion, they haven't made any change at all. They should be fined, then.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
So what they're REALLY saying is this:
"Ok, you're right, we messed up. We shouild have been on sight to make sure that everything goes according to plan, and so that those nice spiffy 'errors' aren't seen by the staff to raise integrity questions later. How silly of us."
you know, after a 360, you are headed in exactly the same direction you started with
maybe the official meant to say "180", but wow. how clueless.
Then they're back to where they were in the first place.
Say no to everything until someone smarter figures out what would be the best thing to do.Or maybe they just became better persons after some time. Who knows?
+1 Agree -1 Disagree
Yeah, they need to make sure the 'right' candidate is elected.
There is a court case in PA which is trying to force the 57 counties which currently use electronic voting machines to use paper ballots.
Obviously this will never happen because having paper ballots would mean having a physical record of a vote if there was a need to do a recount. And we wouldn't want to have a physical trail of votes, now would we?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What's with the misunderstood metaphors? Here's a helpful chart:
Doing a 180 = taking an opposing position to that previously taken.
Doing a 360 = doing donuts in a parking lot.
Doing a 720 = you're drunk and the room is spinning many, many times.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
By the sound of it, the company is performing a 360 helicopter jam with our voting rights.
Don't get in such a fuss. It just means that the election ended up being decided by the high scorer during a marathon multi-user "Halo 2" session.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I was wondering how much my vote cost. Apparently it's just over $200k.
Why is anyone legitimately interested in a "paperless" election? I can see more electronics and other such things, but PAPERLESS?
I didn't realize the publisher of the The Indianapolis Star had changed the name of the newspaper.
Anybody else read the title Company to Pay for Erection Problems ?
-Those bastards, they're just trying to get free Viagra for top management...
So what happened, did the wrong guys win the primary?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Certainly this company still made money off of the elections, but am I wrong to conclude that there was a lot more to this then meets the eye?
Having ordered more software titles then I can count (with accompanying hardware) for student information tracking, transcripts, test-scoring, etc, it's an all too common occurance for a company to deliver and install the software and leave the ultimate setup and performance up to in-house staff.
It would seem that this system was 1) rushed into production, 2) the victim of mainstaying (the state won't change their process to accomodate the software, they want the software to accommodate the state's past methods), and 3) the company was completely ill-equipped to handle support in cruch-time.
If you ask me the only, solution is open-source voting machines so any company can provide support, documentation is available nationally, and voters can have confidence not only in the process, but also in what's happening "under the hood" as well.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
Cryps! Indiana star??? have the editors been replaced with retarded chimps? GOOGLE IT for Gods Sake...I google "indiana star" and "Indianapolis Star" is the first hit...
First it says Indiana, then it says Arkansas. I AM SO CONFUSED!
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
Enough of this crap with broken/complex/rigged election devices. Let's just go back to paper, pencil and handcounting. It's cheap, fairly reliable, and leaves lots of evidence when tampered. Let the news media rely on exit polls for immediate results (after polls close nationwide). They're more accurate than the official results, anyway.
--
make install -not war
and tamper-proofness, switch to Debold!
Its the "Indianapolis Star", no the "Indiana Star"... Idiots.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
If the company did a 360, it means they went all the way around. Maybe they did a 180 i.e. turned it around, didn't like the ROI in being helpful and then did another 180 to go back to being bastards.
=MikeT
There is a better solution than the current methods, in my opinion. Part of the solution is good training. Perhaps when the voter registration and voter cards go out, a mini-DVD could come with it, so people can watch a video of how the voting process works. There would also be written material. Furthermore, the voting machines themselves would talk interactively, with written instructions as well, to make the system as foolproof as possible.
It would work like this: You go into the voting booth. Each candidate or proposition that you vote for would appear one at a time on a display screen. As you vote for each item, it will tell you to confirm that this is the vote you intended to make. At the end of this process, a screen containing all your votes would appear, giving you a final chance to validate everything or go back to fix a mistake. Then, as you accept the vote, a printed paper ballot would be printed with the appropriate vote information, and you would be able to view it through a thick glass window, to make sure that what's printed on the paper matches what you voted for on the screen. This is the final time to make changes - choose to make a change and the ballot is visibly shredded and you get to try again. Choose to accept and the ballot is visibly inserted into a voting box.
The computer system would keep track of all the votes, with results available immediately. The ballots would be counted by hand in the following days or weeks, as before, so as to verify the system's results. This would be foolproof.
Please re-issue the comment on paper at your earliest convenience.
These stories are free but worth money.
This is the same ES&S who's chairman got into trouble with the Senate Ethics Committee because he failed to disclose his involvement with the company when he, as virtual an unknown in his first bid for public office, ran for and won a Senate seat against two well known and popular opponents in what was widely called "a surprise upset" -- in an election which was counted exclusively on machines manufactured by ES&S. Subsequently, the law in his state was changed to prohibit election workers from looking at the ballots, and outlaw hand recounts. The only recounts permitted by law are on machines manufactured by ES&S.
In case that helps put this in perspective.
--MarkusQ
I'm working with ES&S equimpent and I've found that their documentation does need work.
Ben Weeks Network Admin CNA: Netware 4, 5 Network +
A government department actually got some money back from an IT supplier that screwed up? Why isn't it standard for this to happen, instead of taxpayers always picking up the bill for projects that never work properly and go overbudget?
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
Wow - a private company that makes a mistake. Gwarsh, I thought only liberal run goverments do that.
Come to think of it, that's the difference between Democrats and Republicans: Republicans outsource their failures.
Harsh yes, but...
A goal is a dream with a deadline
> ... the company "has done a 360" since the primary
A 360, eh? As in: "Let's do a 360 and get the f*** out of here"?
On the Bright Side, Parent will be modded up 50% of the time as well. LOL
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
What's with the misunderstood metaphors?
Obviously, they're speaking of fermions; if you rotate them 360 degrees, they come back exactly out of phase; you have to rotate them 720 degrees to get back to the same state.
Leaving aside the Sarcasm, that's exactly what we want. Other states including New Mexico and Washington have gone this route as have many counties. In all cases its because of the demonstrated problems with voting systems. In New Mexico's 2004 election we have a perfect test case. In that year the state employed eight different systems scattered more or less randomly thuought the state. Four of these systems were optical scanners and four were paperless touchscreen or push-button DREs (Direct Recording Electronic systems). In the 2004 Presidential race it was found that votes were missing largely from minority voters. Worse yet the missing votes were in up-ticket races, noteably the U.S. Presidential Race. Typically votes are missing for down-ticket races like local judges. Interestingly enough these patternes appeared on all the paperless systems not just systems made by one company or another. Lost votes were not a problem in precincts using the optical scanners. The excess (overcounted) votes were removed because they had the paper backup.
/. It belongs in letters to our state and local elections boards (whoever actually sets the law). It belongs in local newspapers via op-eds. Other people are concerned but most of then simply know nothing about these problems. Changing opinions on this issue won't really happen here, but elsewhere.
At the risk of nagging people, this info doesn't belong just on
Some choice morsels of info can be found Here, here, here, here and here
It's amusing to see that while the Bush admin. is busy harvesting more profits for the oil companies owned by the Bush family (and co.), while the American people are busy with the high rates of oil & lack of jobs.
It's even more funny, that a company previously accused of forging (or aided in) the election results, is set to pay/donate (read the article) $245k only!
So that's the price of America? $245k?
And Bush was elected twice!
I never expected the American people to keep their heads low and not do anything about this.
(War on terrorism? Really? heh)
Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
Jason Biggs called. He says he wants his joke back.
Badass Resumes
I am so tired of hearing about stolen elections. The media have been all over this and any reporter would win a Pulitzer if any evidence could be found.
Here is the best research to date on the Ohio "theft".
http://www.cleveland.com/readers/index.ssf?/base/o pinion/1150619659219900.xml&coll=2&thispage=3/
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kenne dy/index_np.html/
878659 - yep its prime.
You know, I wonder if there might be a simple test for these voting machines. Keep the things from being tampered with after the election is done. Then, reset them and have some trustworthy people visible enter a known number of votes for various candidates. If the end result is not akin to the data entered, then somebody has screwed with the machine to make it skew in favour of particular candidate(s).
This is not my sig.
It's been done, more or less. The reason it can't be done the way you describe is that at least one of the easy ways to tamper with the results is to pre-load the machine with non-zero results (from the link):
--MarkusQ
Perhaps it should read:
Here are viewpoints I support... blah blah.
I ask you to explain the voting list practice in Florida for 2000, where Black Americans were removed from the voting roles, and other people were removed as well, in flagrant abuse of their civil rights.
We're discussing voting machines here, and is it not relevant to discuss the problems of missing votes in view of Ohio's results? Or is it an inconvenient topic, given Diebold's recent scandalous signed code bypass switch? And even more inconvenient the party of those who approved the contracts.
Or perhaps you're okay with the fact that the current administration (and I use the term loosely) has brought the US from amongst the most loved countries on earth to the most despised. Do you work for an oil company? Or perhaps a defense contractor? Do you believe that it's ok for the secretary of defense to be found guilty of war-crimes by your own supreme court, yet have the same administration attempt to bypass the laws through new legislation thereby legitimizing the inhumane treatment of POW in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo? Have you heard of Thermate? Or how about sulfidation of steel? Where are those pesky weapons of mass destruction? Because you're brown does that make you a terrorist? Because I don't believe what you believe, does that mean that I'm misinformed?
Frankly, I don't care what you're tired of hearing, because it seems to me you have quite selective hearing as it is, and you will filter out whatever you don't like anyway...
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
Charles Ponzi of the eponymous scheme immortalized himself with the most daring innovation in the history of crime.
He gave his victims their money back.
A few even got more than they put in. What they didn't realize was that they weren't investing in him, he was investing in them, buying the con-man's most powerful productive asset: trust.
Trust has no place in the election process. Voters may choose to trust candidates. But the mechanisms by which voting takes place must should be trusted. Every part of that mechanism needs to be verifable. If you dont' know what software is running on a machine, you can't verify what that machine does.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You guys are being way too harsh. The fact that the company did a 360 rather than the more covert left-two rights-and a-pair-of-left-hand-45s speaks for itself. If only it could have been the famous left-about face-left instead. Then I would have been really impressed.
I stand or rather sit amazed at how poorly informed many /.'ers are on this crucial issue.
Full Disclosure: I worked providing tech support for the ES&S M-100 in NC's March primary. I have also been active in getting a law passed that required a voter verifiable paper trail in NC. NC's Law
Paperless is absurd. Currently the best electronic solution is paper ballots scanned by an optical scan machine with random audits required. Without the random audits citizens are still trusting the computer (optical scan device) which can be comprimised. Currently only 26 states require a VVPT, of those only 12 require random audits of the paper.
There is a law in the House now that would create a Federal requirement for VVPT. It is HR 550. In North Carolina it took a multi-partisan effort to get a good law passed. The only thing missing from our law is a requirement for open source, although our law does require vendors to supply their source code for review. It also requires a $7.5M bond to cover any problems that may occur as well as felony level offence for violations (like switching source code). No wonder Diebold and Sequoia, though certified, decided they didn't want to do business in NC!
More good reading on this can be found at The Brennan Center for Justice.
-markIf it still needs to be transparent, does that mean you are using cellophane paper? ;-)
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
"Or perhaps you're okay with the fact that the current administration (and I use the term loosely) has brought the US from amongst the most loved countries on earth to the most despised"
Yes, you are so right. During the Clinton years, Kim Jong Il would not have even CONSIDERED building a nuclear weapon, there was no Al Qaeda, Iraq was peaceful and democratic and prosperous, there no terrorism, and the people of Iran were encouraged by the government to dance in the streets chanting "Love to America"!
Where were you when the voynix came?
Naw, actually they are doing a 360, in a continious loop, this is otherwise know as "spinning". This Mr Jackson is obviously doing it with them, give him a break he's just a bit dizzy, as "spinning and being a bit dizzy" are a part of his job description.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Doing a 720 = you're drunk and the room is spinning many, many times.
I am suprised that no one replied with this yet.
No, 720 means you are playing a classic video game.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Danger, war, killer, fraud,
CIA, mayhem, crisis, horrible!
Inflation,
Military threat,
The flaming debris,
Fatal heart attack,
Stress injuries,
Prison disaster,
Economic collapse,
Dangerous radiation.
A tide of violence and human misery,
A liar and an unremorseful killer,
Communist international smuggling pipeline,
Starving victims and how they died.
Chemical weapons,
Carpet bombing deaths,
Top FBI killed and injured children,
Police conspiracy, negative attacks,
Discipline, sex, and drinking binges.
Dying of a heart attack,
Dying of breast cancer,
Dying of a Japanese nuclear bomb,
Mountains of credit card debt,
A mountain of cocaine,
Tons of cocaine.
Atomic bomb radiation experiments,
Unwitting test subjects,
Dangerous radiation,
Marijuana abuse,
Hooked on drugs,
Time for us to bug out!
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.