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

The people that RUN them are the problem

[ScentCone]

For example, you had 238 precincts that didn't get to vote on time. Says a Montgomery County boar of elections supervisor:

"They didn't get to use voting machines to cast their ballots because the county's 238 precincts didn't get needed voter access cards.

"These are the cards that you put into the machines to activate the machines," Nancy Dacek, president of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, tells WTOP. "We have a crew that packs them and for some reason, inadvertently, the access cards were left out."

Which isn't much different than someone not delivering boxes of good old fashioned paper ballots, if that's what those precincts had been expected to use. But no, I'm sure we'll hear how somehow the Governor of the state made the "crew that packs them" hose it up on purpose, blah blah. Or better yet, GWB personally slipped out of the White House to remove the cards from the trucks, just to get everyone even more riled up. *sigh*

Re:(sigh)

[tukkayoot]

Hm. I wouldn't say that people are trying to solve non-existant problems with computers. Computers have the advantage of being impartial (if that is how they're programmed) and unlikely to make mistakes (again, depending on programming). Humans are generally anything but unbiased and infallible.

Personally I'd prefer a system where the votes get counted in every practical manner, or at least allows for such. Electronic voting -- all votes are tabulated by computer over a network, that also provides a human and easily machine readable paper ballot. Have the machines that count the paper ballots and the electronic ballots operate seperately and then verify their results with one another. In the event of a significant discrepancy or the need for a recount, have humans count them, as well as do another paper ballot machine count, using a different machine, perhaps.

It might be a bit expensive, but as our elections are at the foundation of our democratic republic, I think we can afford to "splurge" in this area.

Why??

[ohell]

Maybe one of you Americans can enlighten me on this: why do you need voting machines so much that you have been trying to make them work in spite of all the problems? What is the problem they are meant to solve? The whole world votes by marking slips of paper, that are counted n times by different volunteers under controlled conditions & counts cross-checked to guard against errors, and there is a recount if the ballot is close. The system works, is reliable, accountable, is amenable to auditing etc. What is the problem voting machines are trying to solve? Is it that it that Americans are so busy pursuing liberty, happiness, American dream, evil-doers or whatever that there are never enough to volunteer to count the votes? Is it that the no amount of oversight over humans by humans can ever gurantee 100% accuracy? Is it that touch screens just seem like the way to go in the 21st century? If there is one thing I have learnt in this industry, it is that computer systems do not scale beyond a point (which is much lower than the volume/complexity required when you take whole populations into account), notwithstanding the hype by the likes of Accenture etc. For example, you can consider any government project to 'modernize' large departments. In the UK, I can reel off so many: court records, post office, health service - all of them unqualified disasters. And ID card scheme is supposed to be massively over budget as well... good for the vendors, I guess.

There's "us guys" and then there's "the newsies"

[Ungrounded Lightning]

When was the last time that every news agency in the world focused on the voting in Germany, France, or UK? The US is under a spotlight and a microscope in everything it does.

Well, pretty much all of Europe follows European voting - and U.S. voting. Sorry you guys don't care about the rest of the world,

Many of us DO care about the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, most of our news media are run by elitist morons with political agendas who think the rest of us are even dumber and more provincial than they are, don't need any actual news, but do need to be dragged by propaganda techniques (notably including strategic omission) into politically desirable ways of thinking and acting.

You'll notice the grandfater posting was talking about the focus of news agencies, and while he said "worldwide" he no doubt is basing his opinion on the pap served here.

They tell US about local "irregularities" whenever their candidates lose. They ignore any issues with votes in other countries: Mentioning problems elsewhere doesn't serve their interests. But omitting it gives the impression that voting irregularities here are a local anomaly, that the US system is more corrupt than those of other countries. This helps reenforce their message. ... but I can't quite see how that justifies vote fraud)

Neither can we. That's why so many of us are griping about it.

The dangerous thing about both election corruption and news of it that political stability depends on the perceived honesty of the elections. If a loser thinks they don't represent the will of the people (or at least the subset that's armed and willing to fight over the issue), he may convince himself that it would be possible to reverse the result by force of arms...

Re:Possibly

[Dravik]

Proprietary rioting would be the government staged demonstrations you see on the news in most third world countries.