Voting Machines Wreak Havoc in Maryland Elections

An anonymous reader writes, "Voting machines are wreaking havoc in Maryland elections today. From the article: 'Election Day in Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's opened in chaos and frustration this morning, as a series of problems and missteps left thousands of citizens unable to vote or forced to cast provisional ballots... Montgomery County's Board of Elections held an emergency meeting and agreed to petition the Circuit Court to extend voting times until 9 p.m.' It's simply shameful."

Comments

Re:User Error

[jimstapleton]

I think that then goes back to KISS. If you only have to remember the ballots and either hole punches or pens, it's not that hard. But when you get to having who knows what along with the machines, it's reasonable for someone to forget something, especially if it's not well documented (and/or they aren't properly informed). There's a lot that goes into this. The big part is, there's a lot of room for human error in this one unfortunately.

Re:(sigh)

[peterarm]

As a Canadian who has read Slashdot for many years, will someone please explain to me what is so hard about voting?

1. Take a piece of paper.
2. Mark an X in a big box CLEARLY beside the candidate you want.
3. Put it in the ballot box.

Can it really be that simple? Yes!

As a software developer, I have to ask:

WHY IS ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS USING A BLOODY COMPUTER TO DO THIS? I don't care if it's open source or closed source software on it, running on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, whatever. All of these are harder to verify (if not impossible) that no tampering was done than SIMPLE PIECES OF PAPER.

Here, I'll link to Cringely, that way you'll know it's true ;-) http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031211. html

Re:(sigh)

[Richard Steiner]

Why are they using computers?

Because somebody, somewhere is getting a cut of the contract costs...