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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.
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.
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...
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...
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
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
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.
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
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.
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