More Voting Shenanigans in Florida

stewwy writes "It looks like the the shenanigans have started already, the Register is running a story about the difficulty early voters are having with casting votes for Democrats." From the article: "The touch-screen gizmos seem strangely attracted to Republican candidates. One voter needed assistance from an election official, and even then, needed three tries to convince the machine that he wanted to vote for Democrat Jim Davis in the gubernatorial race, not his Republican opponent Charlie Crist."

Comments

Excellent!

[moseman]

Our evil plan is working perfectly.

Re:Excellent!

[__aaclcg7560]

I thought the evil place was to have the machines blue screen to death instead of voting for the other twit. Only in Florida can something so brilliant like this get so screwed up so fast. :P

Re:Excellent!

[El Torico]

The first rule of the evil plan is you do not talk about the evil plan.

Re:Excellent!

[Slagged]

Yes, my plan to sell millions of tin-foil h.....er....ummm.

Re:Excellent!

[NadNad]

"Causing the machine to crash gives a blue screen of death, and given the propensity of Winders to crash, we're just trying to even out the machines' inherent bias towards the Democrats."

Re:Excellent!

[tbannist]

Indeed, the votes which have been corrected to vote Republican are just making up for reality's well known liberal bias.

Re:Excellent!

[Overly Critical Guy]

And yet, no word from Slashdot on the dead people casting absentee votes for Democrats as reported recently.

I think it's just honest accounting/mechanical errors on both sides, and political devotees want to make conspiracy theories out of it. Unfortunately, most of the media leans left (according to a UCLA/Stanford study), so only the Republican conspiracies get reported while all the Democratic corruption (if a Republican did what Reid did with his real estate, it'd be all over the news) gets buried. Anyone who followed the election closely in 2004 remembers the shenanigans from both sides (people were even slashing the tires of GOP voting vans!), yet people selectively remember only the Republican shenanigans two years later. Odd how that works.

In other words, STFU with your goddamn conspiracies, you loony wingnuts/moonbats. You fuck up politics and turn it into a big playground with two lines of children throwing spitwads back and forth and tattling to the teachers about various things.

Re:Excellent!

[McFadden]

And yet, no word from Slashdot on the dead people casting absentee votes for Democrats as reported recently.

With respect, it's the failure of the technology that makes it relevant to the slashdot readership. If every small incidence of voter fraud were reported, slashdot would have no room for anything else.

In other words, STFU with your goddamn conspiracies, you loony wingnuts/moonbats. You fuck up politics and turn it into a big playground with two lines of children throwing spitwads back and forth and tattling to the teachers about various things.

That's right. It's the conspiracy theorists that are responsible for the complete polarization and "fuckup" of politics these days. You keep on believing that. Sounds almost like a conspiracy in itself. (And that's ignoring the fact that you're the only person who's descended into pathetic name-calling and ranting, yet you feel justified in calling other people children).

Re:Excellent!

[Ryan Amos]

You can track the dead people though. There is a way to detect that kind of fraud and it's not going away. The problem with this is not "OMG the republicans are haxxoring votes!" The problem is "OMG we don't know if the republicans are haxxoring votes or not, but something fishy is going on here."

Voting machines "malfunctioning" is not a partisan issue. I'm sure both sides will exploit it equally. Dead people voting is at least possible to detect if you have the death certificates. Election fraud that looks like a malfunction is bad, because in that case all you have to do is cause a malfunction in an election machine and you can invalidate all of the votes it has recorded so far.

Shenanigans will always exist on both sides, and I believe they are both minimal and equally distributed enough not to sway a national election (local elections are another story, but those are usually more personal.)

If you have anyone to be critical of, it should be the media. And not just with politics, they're looking to create a scandal with *everyone*. "News" in this country is created to entertain, not inform. They're just looking for a juicy tag line that will get you to sit through 2 minutes of commercials.

Re:Excellent!

[deanoaz]

The practical way of stealing votes is to change the output from the electronic voting machine, NOT to screw up the GUI interface so something appears to be wrong with it.

Electronic voting machines should never have been allowed in the first place. A physical ballot that gets counted by machines can be recounted, examined, etc. A crooked or defective electronic voting machine does not have this advantage.

Re:Excellent!

[bhirsch]

That's right. It's the conspiracy theorists that are responsible for the complete polarization and "fuckup" of politics these days. You keep on believing that. Sounds almost like a conspiracy in itself. (And that's ignoring the fact that you're the only person who's descended into pathetic name-calling and ranting, yet you feel justified in calling other people children).

No kidding. We all know that the Republicans are to blame for the political polarization. It's not like the Democrats have lost a lot of power and are desperate to differentiate themselves and bash the Republicans, while dragging their base along with them while more moderate people have little choice but to vote for Republicans. Of course, it's all Dick Cheney and Karl Rove orchestrating a conspiracy (with a little bit of help from the Catholics).

Re:Excellent!

[Overly Critical Guy]

Most of the media does not lean left. You meant to say that most of the reporters employed by the media lean to the left. What does the political leanings of a company's employees have to do with its own political ties?

As far as Democratic stories getting buried: Yep, I remember 1994 - 2000. No stories about Democrats in the news at all. You're an idiot, but I'm not surprised. It's sort of a prerequisite for your political persuasion. Your last two sentences have assisted in making my case.

Another angry Democrat posting anonymously. As for 1994-2000, positive economic stories abounded during those years. Yet today we're looking at a booming economy with an unemployment rate even lower than Clinton's era, and you don't see that trumpeted by the press at all like during the Clinton years, do you? Pretty interesting how that works out. Have you examined the political leanings of the last few New York Times editors? Have you read into why CNN's head exec Eason Jordan resigned after certain anti-military comments (I wonder if you even know about it, since the press buried it even though it would be plastered all over the media if it was a Fox News exec)?

Heck, Newsweek was going to bury the Monica Lewinsky story at the request of the Clinton administration, but the Drudge Report caught wind and exposed it. If a Republican president had an affair with an intern, it would be instant front page news on the New York Times. If it's a Democrat, it gets buried at the last minute by Newsweek's higher-ups who deem it as "non-news."

Why do you think conservatives dominate talk radio and political blogs? It's because they feel like they don't have a fair outlet in the mainstream press, so they took over an alternative market to get their voice out, and the market responded enthusiastically. It's not a comment on which side is right or wrong; it's just a point to illustrate how fucked up politics is due to extremists filtering the facts on either side. You have to navigate the sea of bias to get the facts from both sides.

Re:Excellent!

[Overly Critical Guy]

Accidentally left out my response to this:

Most of the media does not lean left.

According to the study, it does. Another recent study done shows that mid-term election coverage in the media, again, heavily favors the Democrats. The New York Times recently endorsed Democrats across the board for the first time in its history--no Republicans at all.

You meant to say that most of the reporters employed by the media lean to the left.

No, I didn't.

What does the political leanings of a company's employees have to do with its own political ties?

A lot. The net result is a filter on the news you see and hear and a relentless denial from its enablers.

Re:Excellent!

[Asrynachs]

Thankyou!

Re:Excellent!

[aggiefalcon01]

Or try this on for size:

John Kerry insults our military. The media response? "It was just a botched joke. Bush is evil. Let's get back to that."

Rush criticizes Michael J Fox's political ads, and is surpised by what he sees, so he tries to demonstrate it ... but focuses on the content of Fox's ads, as opposed to Fox himself. The media response? "This is an outrage. Rush should apologize for being born!" (while ignoring the *real* debate over what Rush said about cloning, and what Fox said about stem cells).

Yep, no liberal bias at all.

Re:Excellent!

[dedalus2000]

or one this study entirely ignores op-ed time. second it only uses the comparative frequency of think tank situations without regard to context. third you have to assume the average member of congress represents the true political center which is not proved by the study and seems to be refuted by poll results.

besides bias is a more subtle thing. the stories that go unprinted or unaired; the buried retractions; the amount of air time given to a viewpoint; the amount of time dedicated to a story; the type of story that gets researched in depth; the timing of news; whether "liberal" pundits are even liberal rather than centrist; all of these things are important factors when looking at media bias.

as an example of bias look at the coverage the upcoming FCC vote on proposed media ownership rule changes is getting on ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. is there an interview with the founder of the EFF? if it's mentioned at all it will be non prime time news or it will be framed in the context of cable competition. if the EFF is mentioned or a member interviewed it will be followed by refutations of the points made.

Re:Excellent!

[foamrotreturns]

The electronic ballot machines also print out a copy of what you voted on a roll of paper that is kept inside the machine under a lock. The paper passes through a transparent plastic window so that you can verify the results as they pass. There is no room for error there. It's taken care of, so quit your whining.

Re:Excellent!

[Drooling Iguana]

What if you've already captured the guy trying to foil your evil plan and have placed him into a slow-acting and easily escapable death trap? Surely you must make an exception then.

Re:Excellent!

[Fred_A]

You can track the dead people though.

By the trail of corpses with their heads bitten off ?

The last polling report I saw outside a cemetary was pretty dull...

Re:Excellent!

[Planesdragon]

John Kerry insults our military. The media response? "It was just a botched joke. Bush is evil. Let's get back to that."

John Kerry is an idiot. (How do you go from "how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" to "I voted for the $80 billion before I voted against it"?) And even that botch isn't necessarily foul play, coming from someone who was all but drafted to fight in Vietnam. And the minority of soldiers (et al) who made a career out of it can feel insulted; everyone else should just quiet down.

Rush criticizes Michael J Fox's political ads, and is surpised by what he sees, so he tries to demonstrate it ... but focuses on the content of Fox's ads, as opposed to Fox himself. The media response? "This is an outrage. Rush should apologize for being born!" (while ignoring the *real* debate over what Rush said about cloning, and what Fox said about stem cells).

Rush accused Fox of faking his illness. If you want to compare it to Kerry being an idiot, you'd have to find a JK quote where he said something equally out of bounds -- such as "the United States Military faked 9/11." The fact that the debate is ignored is Rush's own fault.

(Oh, and for the record -- stem cell research and cloning are two entirely different things. Hell, "cloning" is about as much what we see in labs as "teleportation" is getting two atoms to line up from fifteen feet away.)

Re:Excellent!

[WilliamSChips]

I saw nothing of the sort. I saw "Oh my god, Kerry is an evil killer of military babies!!!111xor!!!" and the last time I saw any mention of Limbaugh was when he was shown to be a flaming hypocrite with respect to drugs. But don't let reality's liberal bias get in the way of your truthiness.

Re:Excellent!

[apex2048]

VVRs (Voter-Verified Recipts) are not present on a huge majority of electronic voting machines. Almost none of the Diebold machines (the ones those Stanford? guys proved hackable in roughly 30 seconds or so) have a any form of printout.

Re:Excellent!

[Crunchie Frog]

The last polling report I saw outside a cemetary was pretty dull...

?

let me guess, it was a dead heat?

Re:Excellent!

[Dining Philanderer]

Yes, I might have met one or two amongst the throngs of hippie hemp smokers.

Re:Excellent!

[Mike_K]

Why do you think conservatives dominate talk radio and political blogs? It's because they feel like they don't have a fair outlet in the mainstream press, so they took over an alternative market to get their voice out, and the market responded enthusiastically.

Actually, it's because turning on the radio is much easier than reading. So the scores of people who can't be bothered to read a newspaper and instead prefer listening to the same 10 songs over and over and over again are easily attracted to the mindless comments made by the likes of Limbough and O'Reily who think that subtelty is a Mexican dish that is would make America more attractive to illegal immigrants. Most people I know who can read and think for themselves get a gag reflex when forced to listen to conservative pundits.

m

Re:Excellent!

[deanoaz]

If all machines had the printed roll that you describe, if the recorded rolls were durable and both human and machine readable, and if it were the votes on the recorded rolls that were actually counted in an election and all recounts, then the machines would approach the same validity as a physical ballot and could be an acceptable method of voting. Anything short of that should never be accepted by anyone.

Re:Excellent!

[Kingrames]

"Yet today we're looking at a booming economy with an unemployment rate even lower than Clinton's era, and you don't see that trumpeted by the press at all like during the Clinton years, do you?"

That's because despite the average pay going up, every single group fro the upper middle class on down has actually LOST part of their salary since Bush took office.
Yes, the rich are getting THAT much richer.

"If a Republican president had an affair with an intern, it would be instant front page news on the New York Times" ...but if a prominent republican in charge of drafting legislating to protect children is raping little boys, you don't hear about it for YEARS, and even then only because a page himself brought it up in earshot of someone who did care.

"Why do you think conservatives dominate talk radio and political blogs?"

Those aren't conservatives.

Re:Excellent!

[Captain Splendid]

...differentiate themselves and bash the Republicans...

Goddamn that's some funny shit right there. If that's what you call what those limp-wristed idiots have been doing the last few years, the GOP must be even bigger pansies than I though.

Re:Excellent!

[hey!]

No, he didn't insult the military, he insulted the political leadeship that is over the military.

Getting a college degree isn't what makes you educated. Having curiousity and intellectual integrity is. My mom grew up in the Depression and her family followed the lumber camps to wherever there was work. She didn't attend school past the eigth grade. But she read a great deal; books, certainly, and the newspaper cover to cover every day. Do that for a few decades and you'll know a thing or two. Plus learning to survive in an unheated cabin in the backwoods of Maine, living off game, and dealing with ethnic and religious hatred teaches you some things you don't get in college.

I'm not saying college isn't valuable; I'm just saying it is arrogant to assume that anybody without a diploma is automatically ignorant.

Re:Excellent!

[hey!]

And yet, no word from Slashdot on the dead people casting absentee votes for Democrats as reported recently

Look, let's stipulate that every reasonable and honest person is against election fraud.

There has always been some level of election fraud on each side. The dead voter gambit is the kind of low tech gambit a precinct captain in a populist political machine might do to fix returns for his precinct. It's a serious crime, but at least it's detectable. If John Doe voted in Precinct 10, and John Doe of Precinct 10 is dead, it's easy to show that the election was tampered with. Furthermore, you can't alter the election more than by the margin of dead people who have not been purged from the voter rolls using this method.

Some Republican methods of election fraud are low tech affairs that can be initiated by individuals, such as sending out misinformation about election dates or implying that properly registered naturalized voters might face deportation for voting.

What is of greatest concern though are the methods that make use of government power to put the election outcome in the hands of private parties. This form of election tampering is mainly the province of Republicans with their cozy relationships with certian businesses. An example is the purging of voter roles of felons. By using an algorithm that generates lots of false positives, private database companies can swing an election towards candidates who are good for their business.

The fixed election machine is the ulitmate election rigging gambit, because unlike dead Mr. Doe, there is no way to detect it other than catching it while it is going on. Once those machines are in place everywhere, it will become impossible to prove any election was proper.

Re:Excellent!

[OptimusPaul]

That would be ideal, I would back that, Is there any support for this in the industry?

Re:Excellent!

[bhirsch]

What do you call it?

Re:Excellent!

[aggiefalcon01]

Truthiness. Heh. Colbert's funny. If claiming that "reality has a liberal bias" sounds good, then run with it. I'm more of a skeptic.

So Limbaugh is a flaming hypocrite w.r.t. drugs? Proove it. He claims he's always avoided the subject of drugs specifically because he's got a problem there. People have dug into his archives to proove he's lying and, well, the proof just ain't there.

Then again, I guess he could've pulled a Sandy Berger and modified his archives somehow, but I doubt it.

Re:Excellent!

[aggiefalcon01]

Good point. I was under the impression Rush accused Fox of exaggerating (specifically, going off his meds, for more dramatic effect). Rush says that Fox wrote in his book that he's done exactly this, for exactly that reason, from time to time.

And while their activities aren't quite the same, the reaction by the media is still illuminating. Kid gloves and rationalizing for Kerry; indignation and outrage for Rush.

Lastly; cloning & stem cells are extremely different; I agree. So it's strange that the legislation in question - the legislation which Fox supports, even though he didn't read it - has "stem cells" in its title, when in its content it actually focuses on legalizing cloning. As the two things are so different, it's strange that the politicians would put "stem cells" in the title of a bill to allow cloning ... unless they're being deceptive politicians.

Oh, wait. Guess I got redundant in that last bit there.

Re:Excellent!

[aggiefalcon01]

The media was against Iraq from the very beginning. When was it ever all cheers about invading Iraq? Truly, the media has been out to sabotage the effort from the start.

The same media that has yet to make a big deal out of the President's numerous impeachable offenses?

The media has done exactly this since before Bush took office. The media has been clamoring for impeachment at every opportunity. Unless you're only watching Fox News (and even they aren't all that conservative), you'd have seen both of these happening.

Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lemurmania]

I don't want to sound like a Mel-Gibson-style conspiracy nut, but it's hard not to reach for the tinfoil when you read anecdotal reports like this. It would take such a small shift of votes to change an election ... I dunno, can the party in power resist that temptation? Given that they can't resist any other temptations?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lord Bitman]

You seem to have never used a touch screen in your life. Allow me to explain: They are always poorly calibrated peices of shit due to the seperation between the display and the sensors. They often read inputs a bit above or below what you intend to push. Depending on the type of touchscreen, this often is due to the height of the user, though simple poor maintenence is also an issue and can lead to left/right problems as well.
People in Florida are well known for not knowing what to push based on what they see and how tall they are, see: http://www.newyorkslime.com/florida-ballot.jpg

I recommend getting rid of all the short people.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Unfortuneately, it seems (according to the article) that the real explaination is much more mundane- touch screens need recalibrating from time to time, and somebody has been sloppy with the recalibration schedule.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[HappySqurriel]

I don't want to sound like a Mel-Gibson-style conspiracy nut, but it's hard not to reach for the tinfoil when you read anecdotal reports like this. It would take such a small shift of votes to change an election ... I dunno, can the party in power resist that temptation? Given that they can't resist any other temptations?

One problem with anecdotal reports is that they can easily be abused by the media to skew people's opinions of what is happening. Suppose, for a moment, that these voting machines are buggy and that you have similar numbers of Republicans and Democrats that have problems voting for their candidates. Now with past voting irregularities in Florida there is an increased sensitivity in Democrat voters to problems like this; this means that these people are more likely to report these problems to the media, and the media are far more likely to report these occurances.

I'm not saying this is what is happening, it is just a possibility.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Tiber]

The party of power at the time of the purchase was the Democratic party.

I highly suggest voting for Joe Pebkac this election. He seems a bit naive, but can be trusted.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[soft_guy]

Touch screens can be aligned and then they are not hard to use. Alignment does not have to be a lengthy process, nor is it difficult, nor does it have to be done often. Anyone who ever used a Newton or Palm knows this.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Hijacked Public]

Touchscreens are used extensively in the manufacturing industry for operator/machine interfaces. Some of the better HMI packages even have built in drivers and calibration.

These screens are used by people of widely varying height, vision, mental bandwidth, sometimes wearing gloves and sometimes not. They are also exposed to dust and sand and solvents and grease.

While I agree that people have a hard time knowing what to push I wouldn't blame the screens. If someone can't cobble together a reliable touch interface that doesn't need to be calibrated in the field, for a system will run only one application, they are either incompetent or purposely screwing up. The latter would be my guess.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Mozleron]

I suppose the people voting for Joe Pebkac should ask for the ID-10-T ballot?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Dachannien]

Something else to consider is that the candidates are most likely always listed in the same order for every voter. Depending on the facing of the screen, it may cause problems for tall users, short users, or people on the extremes of each, and the errors will always be in the same direction for each of those groups.

In the case of short people, for example, if Crist is listed first and Davis is second, then the alignment of the image with the touchscreen is likelier to be such that attempting to select Davis will lead to actually selecting Crist. Short people attempting to vote for Crist won't have the problem of accidentally voting for Davis, because they'd already be either off the top of the list of names or at the top of the touchscreen.

One solution would be an adjustable screen that can be pivoted to face the user. If the screens are LCD, then the feature is self-managing, because users wouldn't be able to see a screen that's not adjusted to face them. Of course, a cheaper solution would be to make the selectable regions as large as possible. ("The fingers you are using to dial this phone are too fat. If you would like to order a special phone, please mash the keypad with your palm now.")

Believe it or not, we have this parallax problem in our D&D group. We use a 1/4" sheet of clear plexiglass on our tabletop for mapping dungeons, and under that we put a grid mat (the grid mat sucks for writing on with markers, but the plexi works great). The only problem is that, depending on where you're sitting, the grid lines on the mat appear to match up with a different spot on the plexi, so if two people on opposite sides of the table are cooperating to draw out a map, sometimes their lines won't match up.

Anyway, it bears mentioning that this was the same problem that led zillions of Floridians to accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan, and was partly to blame for the dramatic push toward "modern" voting machines. At least you don't get hanging chads with a touchscreen, I guess.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Well sure. The Republican voters are probably impressed that
the machine magically knows who they are going to vote for.
Therefore, they won't complain.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lendrick]

And of course it's a well known fact that poorly calibrated touch screens tend to lean overwhelmingly republican.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[mordors9]

I saw on the TV that a survey showed dead people voting for Democrats 4 to 1. This may go a ways in evening that out....

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[edward2020]

You're joking right? Trust a politician. Sounds dangerous to me. Of course, that does NOT mean that you should trust the other snake either. All snakes exhibit snake-like behavior.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Sancho]

Depends... I have to realign my PDA's screen almost every day, it seems. I also had a faulty Palm Pilot once that where alignment didn't last more than an hour. That one got replaced.

A good cleaning might help (if dust/dirt gets under the edge of the screen, it can screw up the alignment.) but that's a pain. Maybe these machines just aren't being taken care of like they should.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[doom]

Lord Bitman wrote:

You seem to have never used a touch screen in your life. Allow me to explain: They are always poorly calibrated peices of shit due to the seperation between the display and the sensors.

Ah yes, a mere misalignment problem. That always favors the Republicans. Oh no, it's not the misalignment, it's the press bias that favors the Republicans. Oh wait, in 2004, it was only Democrats who called the hotlines problem... well it must be a respondant bias (Republicans never complain about anything. Or no one told them where to complain? Or something like that).

If you can get into sardonic amusement, election season need never be glum.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

['nother poster]

Well, if the repubican poll workers don't mind zombies voting, why should you? Oh, and they vote Democrat because they are dead and need the Social Securiy befits that the Republicans want to abolish as an entitlemnet.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[killjoe]

Even if it was the voting machine randomly switching votes isn't that something to be concerned about? You make it sound like if the votes were switched randomly everything is hunky dory.

Having said that...

1) There is documented evidence of votes for democrats going to republicans.
2) There is no documented evidence of votes for republicans going to democrats.
3) The elections office is being run by republicans.
4) The voting machines are made by a company which is being run by an avid republican supporter.

If you want to keep pretending that this is some minor glitch then go ahead.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[buswolley]

Perhaps...But then again... We must consider the sample of people likely to report problems..

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[dan828]

And from TFA: Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

SO what we have here is a few incidents with misaligned screens, and a some of the cases, the screen registered the republican instead of the democrat, and of course the press picked up on those in order to feed the conspiracy theories. Actually, the story picked a single incident that that happened in.

So to recap TFA:

There are reports of errors with the voting machines. These appear to be relatively minor and the poll workers are trained to fix them. Some districts keep records of maintenance, some don't, and at least one seals the machines for later review. And in one case, the voter was selecting a Democrat, but it came up Republican, but after three tries they were able to vote for the candidate they wanted. Then they called the press.

Excuse me, but making a big deal about this is just FUD.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[piehole]

This is hardly a tinfoil hat issue. I don't know about this particular incident, but there is an enormous amount of evidence that fraud can be and has been committed. Here is a link to a relevant wikipedia entry. Before anybody complains about the reliability of wikipedia, read all TFAs that are linked from that article.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[tscheez]

Unfortuneately, it seems (according to the article) that the real explaination is much more mundane- touch screens need recalibrating from time to time, and somebody has been sloppy with the recalibration schedule.

which is a safe bet, since your grandma is running the polling places and therefore the ones re-calibrating the machines.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nat ion/2004-08-08-voting-workers_x.htm

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[NickDngr]

While I agree that people have a hard time knowing what to push I wouldn't blame the screens. If someone can't cobble together a reliable touch interface that doesn't need to be calibrated in the field, for a system will run only one application, they are either incompetent or purposely screwing up. The latter would be my guess.

I work in the casino industry. We have thousands of touch screens and I couldn't disagree with you more. Touch screens suck. Period. There is not a single less reliable piece of equipment in this building. And they don't even have any moving parts.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[xENoLocO]

How come they never have to recalibrate an ATM machine? Surely they can make a voting machine as simple to use as an ATM machine.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[geoffspear]

Oh please. You can bet that if a single voter accidentally voted for a Democrat when they meant to vote for a Republican, FOX News would be on the scene with 24-hour coverage of how Nancy Pelosi is trying to steal the election to feed her evil lust for power.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[buswolley]

Don't jump to conclusions, friend. I said consider. Considering a position is not the same as adopting a position.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Dun Malg]

this was the same problem that led zillions of Floridians to accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan

No, the Buchanan vote was caused by use of the "butterfly" ballot, where the names on the left page correspond to the odd numbered holes, and the names on the right correspond to the even. Instead of punching the hole next to the names, as indicated by the arrow, they were punching the hole next to the LINE above the names-- which happened to actually be a vote for the next guy down on the opposite page: Buchanan. Here, take a look. That's no parallax, that's just bad ballot design combined with nimrod voters.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[DJCacophony]

in some of the cases, the screen registered the republican instead of the democrat

No, in all of the cases. Drop the spin. Can you please explain to me why no news source, anywhere, is reporting on voting "errors" that favor the democrats? I guess every news source in the nation is liberally biased, huh?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[KFury]

Speaking as a UI designer, there's an easy way to counter minor calibration drift: Give people large buttons.

Most races have a small number of candidates, and giving users the largest possible button drastically decreases misvotes. Interestingly, the larger the button, the more the user will press the center of it, resulting in fewer miscalibration (or, more likely in a voting environment, parallax) issues.

It would be interesting to run a few empirical tests and see if the calibration drifts depending on whether the democrat or republican is listed first.

Another good answer would be to unobtrusively recalibrate for each user by giving them a few simple 'press here to continue' screens.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[DJCacophony]

It's happened before. I tried to withdraw 40 dollars and ended up voting for Pat Buchanan.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[neil-ngc]

Definately glad my votes are still marked with an X. This whole concept of automating elections just screws things up.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[soft_guy]

How come they never have to recalibrate an ATM machine?

We are talking about calibrating touch screens. I have never used or even seen an ATM machine that had a touch screen. Next obvious question is: why do voting machines have touch screens?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[EastCoastSurfer]

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, when did a couple of anecdotal reports lead to 'always'?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[truthsearch]

I'd call the press, too. If just a few votes are miscounted in each district we could be talking about hundreds of thousands of votes nationwide. This is just the one incident we heard about. How many didn't make it to the press?

In my view every single vote that is miscounted or requires hurdles is a detriment to the nation.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[zerocommazero]

Votes getting misplaced is a huge deal no matter WHAT the person's voting choice was. Let's drop the spin and partisan bickering on BOTH sides. How can we depend on these machines if errors like this are "common" and not easily fixed (i mean in seconds)?! These touch screens sound like high maintenance. The screens need to be calibrated during heavy use? A voting day should qualify as normal use not heavy use!

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[jkauzlar]

Really? I saw on a tv survey that 99 out of a 100 people who voted democrat, anywhere at any time in history, had a 'misalignment' problem. I also saw a tv survey where 9999 out of 10000 people gave birth to giraffes, even the men. There was another tv survey were 999999 out of 1000000 people who proved a point by quoting a tv survey were just making it up. Let's see, where did I see these statistics? Was it the Paris Business Review?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[doom]

EastCoastSurfer wrote:

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, when did a couple of anecdotal reports lead to 'always'?

And as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, there were widespread reports of the same visible "vote switching" symptom back in the 2004 election. I was referring to the documentary: Stealing America Vote by Vote..

This current story would not be of much interest if the same thing hadn't happened before.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[dan828]

How about you drop the spin? "All" of the cases are a total of three that are mentioned, and TFA is actually a rather poorly written FUD taken from a Miami Herald editorial: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/editoria l/15889697.htm

The editorial clearly says that these are glitches that result from touchscreens that got out of sync.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[pizpot]

You seem to have never used a touch screen in your life. Allow me to explain: They are always poorly calibrated peices of shit due to the seperation between the display and the sensors.

Well then, how come the one at my orthdontist office works so good? It shows a list of patient names and you pick yours. The names are listed vertically in a slightly large font. It never gets my pick wrong. I go there every 2-4 weeks for the last 2 years.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[bogado]

You seem to have never used a touch screen in your life. Allow me to explain: They are always poorly calibrated peices of shit due to the seperation between the display and the sensors. They often read inputs a bit above or below what you intend to push. Depending on the type of touchscreen, this often is due to the height of the user, though simple poor maintenence is also an issue and can lead to left/right problems as well.

So don't use them, I agree with you touch screens are a pain in the ass, even more when they are used in a place where they are used frequently and sometime brutally. The question is why use them? Isn't the good old push buttons not enough? We've been using them for at least a hundred years and they don't get misaligned or loose the precision with use. So why use a relatively new tech when there is another one just as good?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[dangitman]

Excuse me, but making a big deal about this is just FUD.

What??! It's a big deal whenever a voting system records inaccurate reults. It doesn't matter if it was deliberate or accidental. The idea of having to calibrate machines as they are being used in an election is quite absurd. It also suggests that poll workers would be able to deliberately mis-calibrate the screens at will. These systems are obviously inadequately designed and not suitable for service, if this is what is required to keep them running.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[phatlipmojo]

You've never seen an ATM with a touch screen? Where do you live, Namibia?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Nerd4News]

Why don't they use those terminals like they have at McDonalds. Push a button and your choice lights up on the screen. If McDonalds employees can use them you would expect that even Florida voters could. Or maybe they'd just end up electing Mayor McCheese.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[saltydogdesign]

Fortunately, we have more than just anectdotal reports to lean on. I highly recommend Mark Crispin Miller's review of the studies that were done of the 2004 Ohio election from Harpers (http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptNoneDare.html). The conclusion of most of these was that Kerry probably won Ohio by a fair margin, but due to deliberate attempts to voter supression, incidents of touch-machines flipping mountains of votes to Bush or simply adding non-existent votes to the Bush column, and boxes of paper ballots mysteriously disappearing, he was denied a good many votes that should have gone to him.

These are facts, and you don't need to break out the tinfoil in order to apprehend them. Now, as to whether these efforts were the work of individuals or were coordinated by the likes of Karl Rove -- that's where documentation doesn't exist. But one way or another, it was a fraud, and there's no reason to assume it won't happen again. The pity is that, aside from a bit of idle discussion here and a on a few other websites, nothing will come of it.

As to your assertion that these incidents are getting too much attention, that's just dead wrong. The study done of Florida in the wake of the 2000 election was buried in the Times, as were the studies of Ohio in 2004. This very article is a good example of the problem -- it was printed in the *UK* for God's sake. Check Google News for "Florida" and you'll notice our story is the sixth one listed, after stuff about crocodiles and football. How's that for interest from the U.S. media? And not one paper picks up the Register's story. Is that what you call overreporting?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[kinglink]

Your wrong. There's some great touch screens and light pen systems that just put everything shame. You probably use one for Point of Sale units when you use credit cards.

The one flaw is those touch screens usually cost a good deal of money, Elections are govermental domain so they likely went with the lowest trustworthy bidder. Cheap touch screens are worse than a blindfolded chimp with a gun (at least the chimp might hit the target).

What's next? 12 year old NES light gun technology for the next election? Hint, if you don't check your ballot, you deserve to vote for the wrong person. If your unsure of something, ASK, they pay people to work the election places, if you have a real problem and they can't help you, ask for a paper ballot, complain THEN, not after the election, look for a paper ballot, even with the new fangled machines! Don't be a mindless drone and assume everything will be ok.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[doom]

dan828 wrote:

How about you drop the spin? "All" of the cases are a total of three that are mentioned, and TFA is actually a rather poorly written FUD taken from a Miami Herald editorial: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/editoria l/15889697.htm [miami.com]

Oddly enough, I think this is a case where both sides are talking past each other. Yeah, the Miami Herald story is really light-weight, but the reason it's of interest is the same behavior was widely reported in the 2004 election, where this odd "vote switching" behavior favored the Republicans. And yeah, my understanding is that it always, not sometimes favored the Republicans.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[radtea]

I work in the casino industry. We have thousands of touch screens and I couldn't disagree with you more. Touch screens suck. Period. There is not a single less reliable piece of equipment in this building. And they don't even have any moving parts.

Touch screens are also used for computer assisted surgery and many other medical applications. I have designed touch screen apps for major CAS vendors, and can say unequivocally that touchscreen technology is reliable enough that I would have no compunction about going under the knife with a touchscreen app being used by the surgeon to plan and guide the surgery.

In a retail industry that caters exclusively to stupid people, like casino gambling, the machines you are using are probably the low end of the scale.

The question is: is voting more like surgery, or casino gambling?

Voting is only like casino gambling if what the voter does is irrelevant to the outcome, which is the essence of casino gambling (casino gambling does not involve games of chance--if you play long enough you are absolutely certain to lose.)

So why would anyone use low-quality touch-screens for voting machines?

The only reason I can see is if they hold voters in complete contempt.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[jez9999]

I think this is pretty conclusive.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[LunaticTippy]

My grocer has a self-checkout with a touchscreen. Not only do they get heavy constant use, but they get wet and filthy and keep on working. I've seen a couple malfunction, but it is always the coin/bill handling. I've never seen the screen malfunction, in several years of shopping. I even enter produce codes in tiny 1/2" square boxes and it has never registered the wrong number.

Why are grocer's self-checkouts so much more advanced than voting machines? It must be because voting doesn't matter and grocering does.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[NickDngr]

In a retail industry that caters exclusively to stupid people

Jokes about voters are just too easy when you set them up like this. Feel free to make up your own.

the machines you are using are probably the low end of the scale.

Essentially all slot machines these days use capacitive touch screen sensors. I've only used one type of touch screen voting machine, and it had a resistive touch screen. Capacitive touch screens are much more durable and difficult to damage than resistive touch screens. Wikipedia doesn't address durability very well, but this page does.

The question is: is voting more like surgery, or casino gambling?

I would say it's more like casino gambling. Surgical equipment is used by highly educated people is a very well controlled environment. Casino gaming is used and abused by people from all walks of life and levels of education (customers and staff). The 70 year old lady sitting in my casino is the same 70 year old lady that is going to have trouble using the touch screen voitng machine.

So why would anyone use low-quality touch-screens for voting machines? The only reason I can see is if they hold voters in complete contempt.

The voting machine vendors (Diebold, et al) are just trying to sell a product and make money from it. If they use cheap touch screens they can always make money later when they have to replace it.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[soft_guy]

You've never seen an ATM with a touch screen? Where do you live, Namibia?

Pretty close...New York

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[soft_guy]

realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

So, in 2006 they have a touch screen that is much harder to align than a Newton MessagePad which shipped in 1993.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Bing Tsher E]

Why are grocer's self-checkouts so much more advanced than voting machines? It must be because voting doesn't matter and grocering does.

Possibly because grocers are businessmen engaged in private enterprise, while voting machines are selected by government bureaucrats?

Me, I think we should go back to paper ballots. Hand counted at each precinct. SWAT teams encircle each precinct headquarters and any 'journalists' trying to get 'early results' are shot. Cameras at each precinct webcast the entire counting procedure live, and playback is also available.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Duhavid]

Sounds about right.

The ones that are suspicious will be looking, paying
attention. ( just means we should all be suspicious,
like a good QA person ).

Another point, if some someone was looking to pervert
elections ( and I dont disbelieve this from all the
reading I have done ), it would be about as easy
( as far as I know ) to simply "misrecord" the vote
to the backing store, and leave the UI alone. This
would lead to fewer suspicions about the system.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Bing Tsher E]

You made your point well.

The people who are obsessed with politics are generally warped and weird people without enough going on in their real lives. This includes people from both the 'left' and 'right' if you mean the busybodies who bother participating in 'Political Party Functions.'

Many people want reasonable government that has a minimal amount of control. Some of these people are termed 'conservatives' because they'll vote for whatever guy promises to 'shut the bullshit in Washington down.' George Bush was a politician said people made the mistake of voting for. He's delivered mixed results, but said people are still out there. Others may be called 'liberal' leaning although they don't participate much in the political process, and just want politicians to FOAD.

The people ranting and raving about 'fairness and cheating in the election' to the contrary, are people who buy heavily into the political process. They believe the line: 'I am from the government, I am here to help.' They consider the political process really, really important because they believe a strong government can solve a lot of problems.

We need a mechanism to calm these people down and/or shunt them off somewhere they will do less harm to society. Maybe giving them blogs to rant and rave on is the solution. It's worked well thus far, though they have had minimal success in interfering with regular people's lives.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Bing Tsher E]

You keep pointing us to slanted one-sided works. Most people, when they envision a site titled 'Stealing America Vote by Vote' will understand that it's likely to be a site with a strong bias in one direction or the other.

When will you figure this out?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[zarozarozaro]

>Speaking as a UI designer, there's an easy way to counter minor calibration drift: Give people large buttons.

I am a UI designer of touch panel systems (AMX and Crestron). I have found that when touch screens get worn out they do funny things like register button pushes in areas that you have not touched. Most touch screens use a membrane system to create a set of coordinates where you touched the screen. If this membrane is worn out or if it was poorly manufactured it will act weird, and recalibrating it in software will not help at all.

Large buttons solve many problems, but not this one in my experience.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[WilliamSChips]

I consider.
You perform thought experiments.
He jumps to conclusions.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[carpltunl]

You can calibrate an ATM on any screen that shows just one maybe two buttons such as "Would you like another transaction?" Yes/No or you could use that screen to calibrate vertically and another such as "Enter PIN and press OK" to calibrate vertically.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[carpltunl]

rather vertically..horizontally. I should have proofred.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[doom]

ng Tsher E wrote:

You keep pointing us to slanted one-sided works.

So where's your unbiased source? Point me at it, I'll read it.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[edbarbar]

What's interesting about this? Nothing, unless it is that anyone can find this interesting.

A voting machine was miscalibrated! Wooohooo!

Imagine what would have happened if the year 2K Butterfly ballots in Florida were developed by a republican. People like you would have been ABSOLUTELY SURE it was due to evil republicans. Liberals attack another great institution: Voting. You can't be sure they didn't vote for the liberal!! Recount until we get the answer we want!!!

But when it comes to things like the left leaning media calling it for Gore BEFORE THE POLLS CLOSED, and the likely attendent decline in republicans voting, we hear not a whisper.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[buswolley]

where's that from?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[WilliamSChips]

I made it up on the spot, although it was influenced by a quote from Bertrand Russell that goes "I am firm; you are stubborn; he is pigheaded."

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lord Bitman]

My post should not have been taken as a defense of the machines or the people running them, merely as a "you are dumb" to people who say "Misaligned screens! Must be the republicans!"

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Am I the only person here old enough to remember Palm Pilots?

Recalibrating the display was just a routine regular thing to do.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Trifthen]

Funny, my Nintendo DS is accurate enough to play games on continuously, for hours, months at a time. Making an accurate touch screen isn't exactly brain surgery. If a $130 consumer-device can accomplish such a mighty feat, why not a "robust" voting system? The boxes these people are tapping are probably giant buttons, and people are likely to press in the middle, not an edge where a few pixels *might* pick a different candidate.

I'm not willing to say it's a conspiracy, but there's definitely a vast amount of incompetence involved, and we're basing the future of our democracy on these buggy pieces of shit. That just fills me with pride and confidence. No really, it does.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[PNWNative]

Given the vast amount of tax money that goes into conducting "fair and accurate" elections all over the country it is not unreasonable for a voter to expect the voting machines, mechanical or electronic to do what they are supposed to do. If I am not mistaken, voting is supposed to be a private (secret) matter. Whats this bullshit that you have to have some election official calibrate the machine periodically? Seems touch screen technology has been around a sufficiently long time that this kind of crap should be old news, not todays excuse for a faulty piece of equiptment. If periodic realignment were an expected necessity, then why doesn't the equipment stop until that occurs instead of allowing false positive voting to occur? It appears there is misplaced confidence in poor equipment if they fail that easily. I wonder if you would be so cavalier if it were your vote that was being screwed with? I suspect not, and I can only guess that someone that would defend such mediocrity would be someone that makes their living off of it.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[altstadt]

Not only do I remember Palm Pilots, my wife and I still use our 6 or 7 year old machines every day. I can't remember the last time either of us had to recalibrate the screens though. That must have been at least 5 years ago.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[altstadt]

Actually, now that I think of it, these Palm Pilots haven't been recalibrated since the time they got their first batteries installed. Odd how they still work perfectly after all this time if touch screens are so bad.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[xENoLocO]

That was kind of my point. These machines are pretty important, why would you make them touchscreen?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[killjoe]

The machine was not miscalibrated. It was rigged to throw the election to the republicans.

As for the media they didn't report on armed republicans threatening to kill the vote counters in florida so I would be on their side if I were you.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[chickenandporn]

Yeah. My ATM uses a touch screen, and it gets activity pretty solidly from 4pm to 11pm; the other one I use is near the bars, in a country (China) that is predominantly cash-based, so that bank (pun intended) of ATMs gets solid usage on some days until 3am. The users range from 4-foot-and-a-bit girlies to over-6-footers (DongBei guys are HUGE), gloves and not (China is actually very clean-psycho). After this serious level of usage, they don't seem to "skew".

So far, I don't think any have voted Republican.

Maybe it's because they're Chinese.

Allan

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lord Bitman]

In georgia, that's how it works (the light up part, not the McCheese part). I suspect the people complaining here are just idiots.

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lord Bitman]

I dont know where you get your news, but I tend to hear an even spread of wild accusations around election time from both sides. (Each side claiming that you'll never hear any mention of it from the other side)

Furthermore, if the candidates are always listed in a particular order (Republican, then Democrat), it's easy to see how a miscalibration across the board which tends to register a little lower than a person actually presses (again: have you ever actually used a touch screen? Ones which show a mouse pointer as you move demonstrate this very common miscalibration clearly), would favor one candidate over the other.

Among touch screens which show a mouse pointer (and so are able to clearly show how the screen is calibrated as you are using it), I have NEVER seen one which was dead-on "correct".

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lord Bitman]

Push buttons like they have at ATMs? The ones where you need to count how far down the choice you want is because the buttons are never anywhere near the choices they represent?

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lord Bitman]

I tried a nintendo DS once in walmart. One used by hundreds of people who werent familiar with the exact pressure required to register a click. That one wasnt very well calibrated (surprise!)

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[Lord Bitman]

I've said this before, I'll say it again:

Push buttons like they have at ATMs? The ones where you need to count how far down the choice you want is because the buttons are never anywhere near the choices they represent? (unless you happen to be the exact height the machine was set up for, which seems to be about three feet below the monitor)

Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

[bogado]

In Brazil each candidate has a unique number, witch aways start with the party prefix, if there can be only one candidate per party in such runs such as president, governor or mayor the number of the candidate is the number of the party. So all the voter has to do is to type the number see if the picture/name is from what you desire and press an accept button.

Here all people is demanded to vote, every one, even the ones that are not literate, so this method is tested with people who don't know how to read or write. Every one knows how to recognize numbers, everyone deals with money so it is not an otherworldly to ask people to know how to type a number and check a picture afterwards.

There are ways of doing things. One thing you should do is to normalize your election, if everyone has to vote in a different manner there are thousands of procedures to check for potential holes.

Screens slipping out of synch

[Martin Blank]

Serious question for those familiar with the technology:

Is this similar to the electronic credit card signature systems that display my signature half an inch below where I put the stylus?

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[everphilski]

That's my initial thought as well. It's just a fact of touchscreen LCD's. Only way to compensate is to adjust the location of the input boxes, but that's on a per-machine basis and that's a crappy solution.

A "better box" would be a LCD screen with a seperate button panel along the bottom of the display. That way the input is discrete.

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[nsmike]

My first instinct would be no. These machines are used for a short period; testing and then election day. The misaligned signatures on the keypads in the stores are due to a lack of calibration after many, many uses for long periods of time. I'm willing to bet most stores don't have an IT guy who goes around and calibrates those screens each day.

Voting machines, on the other hand, should be brand new and freshly calibrated in prep for election day. The use that these machines will get in one day is nowhere near so bad as to need recalibration so often that votes should be miscounted. My Nintendo DS Lite has a better touchscreen than that.

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[teslar]

Only way to compensate is to adjust the location of the input boxes, but that's on a per-machine basis and that's a crappy solution.

I'd have thought the obvious solution would be recalibrating the screen, not rewriting the software...

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Moeses]

How about taking that idea one further and modeling the voting machines after well tested technology, both for usability and security...ATMs. They have an interface that works, plus most people are already familiar with it. They have a paper trail in addition to digitally stored state (redundancy should be a no-brainer for this machine). Plus they are secured against tampering.

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[flynns]

How about taking that idea one further and modeling the voting machines after well tested technology, both for usability and security...ATMs. They have an interface that works, plus most people are already familiar with it. They have a paper trail in addition to digitally stored state (redundancy should be a no-brainer for this machine). Plus they are secured against tampering.

BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

love and hugs,
A Former ATM Developer

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[burnin1965]

Screens slipping out of synch

Serious question for those familiar with the technology:

I work in a factory that utilizes several touchscreens of various types, makes, and models for the user interface on the equipment, these screens are subjected to 24x7x365 operation and sustain heavy abuse from pens, excessive physical pressure, and exposure to acid and solvent residues, they do not continuously slip out of sync. Once they are calibrated recalibration is very rare, perhaps once or twice every couple of years.

The statement from the Supervisor of Elections about out of sync touchscreens being normal seems like BS to me. More importantly if the touchscreens do normally slip out of sync then they should not be used for an election and the Supervisor of Elections is failing to do their job if they are allowing such subpar equipment to be used for elections as they put the implementation of democracy at risk.

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Mister Whirly]

Actually the most obvious solution to me is not to use touchscreens...

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[gt_mattex]

Wouldn't the most obvious solution be to not use computers?

I do believe this solution has been discussed on Slashdot before.

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Mister Whirly]

It has and was a little strange reading comments on Slashdot NOT advocating the use of computers for something...

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Hijacked Public]

Absolutely.

Touchsreens replaced massive panels of Allen Bradley pushbuttons and thumbwheels and switches a long time ago. If these things couldn't be made reliable enough to run for months at a time without maintenance that would never have happened.

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Firehed]

How often? I don't think after each vote would be entirely unreasonable. Sure, the process will take a bit longer, but it should give more accurate results. Though if you're too stupid to make sure you actually got the right thing pushed when voting for who's going to run your state/country/whatever, your vote probably shouldn't count either way.

I mean, damn, I double-check the touchscreen in the cafeteria to make sure I ordered the right thing. It gets used by hundreds of people per day and I've yet to see it mess up, and I'd very much doubt that it's frequently recalibrated. I've also had very little issue with other touchscreens in the past... back when I had a Palm, it stayed pretty accurate (until it broke entirely, though the handwriting recognition was always iffy, but it 'clicked' where I poked it). For the number of touchscreens I've used and the number that have messed up, this seems a bit unlikely to have happened by sheer chance.

I hate to scream 'scandal!', but it's certainly fishy. For a friggen VOTING MACHINE, you'd think they could get it properly calibrated. Especially with how easy calibration is.

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[doom]

Mister Whirly wrote:

It has and was a little strange reading comments on Slashdot NOT advocating the use of computers for something...

Personally, it's always seemed weird to me that this is strange. How long do you have to work with computers before you notice that they're a fucking pain in the ass?

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Fishstick]

thought so to - when I first powered on my palm long ago, the first thing it did was ask me to touch the stylus to the points it displayed on the screen. How hard would it be to have the first thing the voter does is do a 1-2-3 point touch calibration?

then again, this assumes you _want_ the machine to accurately record voter intent ;-)

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Mister Whirly]

More than 25 years I guess... But considering that the "fucking pain in the ass" has been providing me with paychecks for a long time, I can tend to overlook that fact at times... As a matter of fact, that is the motto printed on my home-based IT business cards - "Technology is not a panacea."

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Rabbit Time!]

Doesn't Diebold also make ATMs? One would think their voting machines would, in fact, be modelled after their ATMs.

Re:Screens slipping out of synch

[Lord_Dweomer]

If the screen slipped out of sync, and was thus recording Dem. votes as Rep. votes...wouldn't we be hearing from a lot of Republican voters crying out "I tried to click on the button but it wouldn't do anything"?

I've experienced this synch issue on my palm pilot, and it doesn't just affect ONE button. It affects the entire screen. Granted, its hard to discuss this without having a screenshot of what the voting screen looks like (can someone provide?), but it would seem to me that if the synch was off enough to make the Dem. button click on the Rep. button, then the Rep. button would click somewhere else entirely, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Worn machines?

[ackthpt]

Shenanigans or not, these touch screen machines are worn from heavy use?

Excuse me, but I've been to some stores where I use touch sensitive screens for signing or just punching in my PIN, etc. What kind of shoddy materials were these made of? Or is it that Broward County voters are usually pounding their votes in with both fists?

"I did not pick Jeb, damn you machine!" whack pound smek

Re:Worn machines?

[cluckshot]

I am working reviewing the voting machine software for a major US State. The vendors are very slow bringing out any software for review. The review is technical and not for valid elections.

I have looked at the software and I could see the weaknesses the critics describe. They are real. Any election system that lacks a paper trail including paper ballots that are user validated is in my view fraudulent. The systems have a lot of weaknesses as well.

The most important thing that should change in election machines is that the process we uses should be machine independent. That is the failure or status of any particular machine should not halt the election or prevent the correct casting of a ballot.

The true criterion for an election machine should be that it is (1) Easy to use. (2) Very very difficult for anyone to misuse. (3) It should have a paper ballot copy that is saved and validated by the voter and then placed in a secure box for validation and recounts. (4) The system should have off site valid totals kept in at least 3 locations at all times. These locations should be in different custody chains. (5) The election should be subject to automatic recounts if any of the 3 off site totals do not match up to the local totals or between each other.

Re:Worn machines?

[pfoorion]

So how are you going to create these off-site valid totals? Because it sounds like you're suggesting that we should connect these machines to some sort of network, which I think would be a bad idea.

Video of it

[Joe The Dragon]

http://www.boomchicago.nl/en/news-and-images/video s/index.cfm?i=1121

Re:Video of it

[LanMan04]

Why the heck is that video on the Boom Chicago site? Last time I checked, Boom Chicago is a Dutch comedy-club chain.

If they are smart enough to hack voting machines..

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Why would they be hacking these ballot machines? If they are smart enough to hack ballot machines, they would be smart enough to get a well paying job that allows them post in slashdot all day in a working day using his employer's machine ;-)

Across the board

[toleraen]

Another voter who went Democrat across the board kept finding Republicans listed in the summary screen.

I haven't used the new touch screen voting machines, but if you went Democrat "across the board", isn't that a single check box? I seem to remember paper ballots just having one box to strike if you wanted to vote a single party for the entire ballot. How would so called screen calibration errors randomly select republicans then?

Re:Across the board

[DragonWriter]

Voting systems vary quite a bit in the US; some places have used single-box voting for "party-line" voting, others haven't.

Re:Across the board

[OldeTimeGeek]

At least in California, it is impossible to vote for a single party all at once - there simply isn't an option to do so. You have to place a vote for each individual race.

Re:Across the board

[aardvarkjoe]

At least in California, it is impossible to vote for a single party all at once - there simply isn't an option to do so. You have to place a vote for each individual race.

Until reading this, I had never even heard of such an option. What a terrible idea -- do we really need to give people more encouragement to vote without using their brains?

Re:Across the board

[NMerriam]

I haven't used the new touch screen voting machines, but if you went Democrat "across the board", isn't that a single check box?

It said she was seeing Republicans on the summary screen. If you cast a straight-ticket ballot, you only click one box, but at the end you get a verification screen with the list of all the votes (including all the individual votes your straight ticket represented).

The eSlate systems here in TX are so poorly designed that if the candidate's name or office is more than 12 letters long, it's just cut off. So you see useful verifications like "Officer of the Com - Sarah-Jessica L Pa". Considering most people only know candidates by the last name and party, it's basically useless. And all the important information in the office is cut off like which district, which specific seat, etc.

And of course there was no receipt printed at the end, so god only knows if my vote counted.

Re:Across the board

[HoboMaster]

A) People who are going to vote on party lines are going to vote on party lines whether there's a single checkbox or 30.
B) Most people who vote along party lines do so because they agree with the ideology of the party. It's not about single people.
C) I vote straight Libertarian because I agree with their stance on 80% or so of issues, plus I am trying to send the political establishment a message with my vote. I read up on all politicians running in my area and do my research on propositions. Am I still voting without using my brain?
D) Checking one box instead of 30 to accomplish the same thing sounds a lot smarter to me.

Re:Across the board

[HoboMaster]

If Sarah-Jessica Parker starts running for office, I'm going to leave the country.

Re:Across the board

[Johnny5000]

If Sarah-Jessica Parker starts running for office, I'm going to leave the country

Like she'd be any worse than the people who actually are running for office?
Any of them are enough to make me want to leave the country.

Re:Across the board

[Greyfox]

I could see that being a completely different problem with the spec. I could see something like that happening if a Republican were running unopposed for a position. That's not an uncommon event and there's not really a correct assumption for software to handle a straight ticket vote where someone in your party isn't running for an office. Do you record no vote for that office, record a NOTA or do you default to the only candidate running? None of those is going to make everyone happy, but I could easily see the machine defaulting to the only choice in a one person race.

Re:Across the board

[spitzak]

Not in California, and I don't remember seeing this in Massachusetts either.

It sounds like a bad idea. If there was a single checkbox, for small offices the democrat/republican slate votes would overwhelm all the individual votes by people who actually had an opinion about the candidates. Though I'm sure there are plenty of votors who check every Democrat (or Republican) whether they heard of them or not, but lets not make it too easy for that to happen...

Re:Across the board

[falconwolf]

I haven't used the new touch screen voting machines, but if you went Democrat "across the board", isn't that a single check box? I seem to remember paper ballots just having one box to strike if you wanted to vote a single party for the entire ballot. How would so called screen calibration errors randomly select republicans then?

I've voted in two different states and different places in one of those state I've never seen a ballot where you vote straight party line with one checkbox. As I vote for the person, I've voted for democrat, Libertarian, Reform, and Republican candidates, and not the party I wouldn't put up with having to vote party.

Falcon

Three words to stop stuff like this from happening

[8127972]

.....Third Party Verification

Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[stealie72]

Or does the difference matter?

If one "follows the money" it's pretty obvious that Deibold has an incentive to make republicans win, but aren't most of these problems just awful engineering? Crappy programming, bad design, lazy execution.

Still inexcusable, but I just wonder if Deibold et al just suck, and aren't malicious.

Matt

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[LWATCDR]

What you are forgetting is that it might just be an error in the setup.
Just like any PDA these screens probably need to be calibrated. One or more of the poll workers probably didn't do it correctly.
Why is it just the Democrats having issues then?
Every think that maybe it isn't?
If a Democrat is having issues they probably will go running to the press declaring it is all a plot.
A Republican might figure that it was just the machine messing up. Also there is a good chance that any news service would play up the fraud aspect of it because it is good for viewers.

In case anyone has forgotten the ballots that in Palm Beach that many people blame for the Democrats loosing on where laid out by a democrat. The you have the other baloony going on. Even though Foley is not running the Democrats refused to allow his name to be removed from the ballot. Not only that they will not allow signs to put in the polling places to tell people that they are not really voting for Foley! If that is not trying to manipulate the election I don't know what is.

At this point I hate both parties.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[Rob T Firefly]

The scary thing is, Diebold does not suck. They've made ATM machines for years and years, and whenever one of those has an electronic hiccup a pile of affected institutions and regulatory agencies are on it like flies on crap. They've been successful in one of the most stringently controlled hardware/software solutions in the modern world. Unintentional incompetence really can't suddenly enter into things now without one hell of a good explanation.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[is as us Infinite]

Diebold also makes ATMs that work day and night flawlessly (well, 99% flawlessly) with paper trails so that banks know EXACTLY where the money went and if anything has gone wrong. You are correct in saying that these voting machines exhibit 'awful engineering, Crappy programming, bad design, lazy execution.", but when you consider that the company has a track record of the opposite in a (slightly) different field, the needle seems to point more towards maliciousness than carelessness...

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[ocbwilg]

Diebold also makes ATMs that work day and night flawlessly (well, 99% flawlessly) with paper trails so that banks know EXACTLY where the money went and if anything has gone wrong. You are correct in saying that these voting machines exhibit 'awful engineering, Crappy programming, bad design, lazy execution.", but when you consider that the company has a track record of the opposite in a (slightly) different field, the needle seems to point more towards maliciousness than carelessness...

As they say, "never attribute to malicious intent that which is more easily explained by incompetence."

I read an interesting article this morning on just that subject. When you consider that Diebold didn't design the machines that they're selling, and that the company that did design them originally did so for use in non-critical voting functions, like in supermarkets and malls, it begins to look at lot more like greed and incompetence. Diebold wanted the get into e-voting because with their reputation they figured they could make a killing. They couldn't bring an entirely new system to market in time to actually cash in on the e-voting boom, so they bought a smaller company that made something that they could sell as an electronic voting machine. They reaped all the profits, and because they were so busy trying to rush to market with anything that even halfway worked, they are now reaping all of the blame too.

The only question is at what point does blind greed and willful incompetence become maliciousness?

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[blazerw11]

whenever one of those has an electronic hiccup a pile of affected institutions and regulatory agencies are on it like flies on crap.

Flies are typically on crap in less than the 2 days the Diebold ATM at the corner Walgreens is down each week.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[jammer170]

Unintentional incompetence really can't suddenly enter into things now without one hell of a good explanation.

Of which there is one. A voting machine is not an ATM machine. ATM machines are required by law to have many multiple logs, redundancies, and a verified paper trail leading back to the person performing the action (deposit, withdrawal, etc). Voting machines are not, and thus Diebold can save money but cutting those out. Furthermore, voting is suppose to be anonymous, meaning that if Diebold builds a machine that produces a trace directly back to the person that voted, the anonymity aspect is lost. Finally, expertise in one area does not imply expertise in another, and this is a fairly new technology. ATMs have existed since the 1940's, so they've had a long time to mature. The voting machines have not had anywhere near as long.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[Mister Whirly]

"If one "follows the money" it's pretty obvious that Deibold has an incentive to make republicans win, but aren't most of these problems just awful engineering? Crappy programming, bad design, lazy execution."

I'd like to think that, but it would have helped had the CEO of Diebold, Walden O'Dell, not made the statement about being "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" when they were trying to sell machines to Ohio in 2003...

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[tbannist]

Random error is only a plausible excuse when it affects all parties equally. When the error is consistantly for one party or against another (or worse both) there is a real problem whether or not it's deliberate. Anyone who claims otherwise is being disingenous.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[Volante3192]

Even though Foley is not running the Democrats refused to allow his name to be removed from the ballot. Not only that they will not allow signs to put in the polling places to tell people that they are not really voting for Foley! If that is not trying to manipulate the election I don't know what is.

Same with Tom DeLay, but you could also make the argument that the Republicans want to go around the laws already in place for their own benefit. The point isn't "is it fair or not," the point is that it's State law in Florida and Texas that a candidate's name cannot be changed after a certain date, and the courts upheld that law.

Ironically, that's the type of judge the Republicans want: ones that follow a strict interpretation of the law. An activist judge would probably see the illogic of it and rule in a way that would let them change the candidate's name.

Now, though, the duty falls on the legislative branch to change the existing law.

Disclaimer: I hate both parties as well, I'm just posting a counter argument.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[cowscows]

It's as much on the government officials who have insisted on moving to electronic voting so quickly, without taking the time to figure out good guidelines for functionality, security, and accountability. In my opinion, there are some decently good arguments as for why electronic voting machines can be better than traditional voting systems, but none of those arguments are so compelling as to explain why we've needed to rush and spend tons of money buying all of these brand new systems without verifying and testing the hell out of them.

I'm all for technology, and it's exciting how modern design tools and manufacturing can enable us to roll out new solutions in no time flat. But that doesn't mean that it's always a good idea to abandon the old just as soon as something new appears.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[brouski]

Strict interpretation of Florida law got GWB elected in the first place. Republicans need to remember that.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[NMerriam]

Even though Foley is not running the Democrats refused to allow his name to be removed from the ballot. Not only that they will not allow signs to put in the polling places to tell people that they are not really voting for Foley! If that is not trying to manipulate the election I don't know what is.

Uh, no, the legislature and courts refused to allow the ballot to be changed after the candidates were legally established, and they also refuse to allow any postings about particular candidates within a certain distance of a polling place. These are laws that were set up specifically to prevent the manipulation of elections.

Re:Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant

[JasonKChapman]

Still inexcusable, but I just wonder if Deibold et al just suck, and aren't malicious.

Do you really have to wonder? Let's see. On the one hand, they could rig their proprietary software to diddle the vote count in completely unnoticeable ways, thus accomplishing their goal and getting away clean. On the other hand, they could mess around with the touch screen interface to intentionally shift it's registration in whatever direction it needs to go to slide the dem votes towards the reps (just read the screen buffer, I suppose), while still being careful to count the total misses as rep votes, thus accomplishing the goal _IF_ enough people don't notice which candidate is actually selected, _AND_ not enough of those who do notice raise a ruckus, _AND_ they have enough cash on hand to pay the judges necessary to swing the inevitable court case their way.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. Shoddy equipment and idiotic design highlighted by equally shoddy and idiotic "reporting." The Register should just come out of the tabloid closet and go with the "My Wife is an Alien Wolf-Girl with Two Heads!!!!!" kind of story. It might actually improve its journalistic reputation.

Question

[fudgefactor7]

Can anyone point me to an article that has the reverse happening? That is to say, someone tries to vote Republican and the machines flip them all to Democrat... I'm looking, but I can't seem to locate one. Can someone help?

Re:Question

[Keebler71]

From the article - it is clear that the touch screen was not calibrated properly. I'd be curious to know if the Republicans and Democrats are always in the same order for each seperate vote (i.e. Dem is always listed first or vice-versa). If that is the case, and the voter intended to vote "straight democratic" it actually makes sense that if there is a touchscreen bias (due to calibration) then many of your votes would switch to the other party. In more conservative panhandle, I would expect the opposite. Keep in mind that this story originated in a county with large populations of elderly and democratic voters. Younger voters are probably much more likely to have used touch-screens routinely and have learned to almost automaticly compensate for a mis-calibration by adjusting the finger aim-point (I have to do this all the time at my ATM which never seems to calibrate theirs). I don't mean to generalize but I can see this being very confusing for older voters.

Re:Question

[Mister Whirly]

Thanks for your take on the Liberal Media(TM) Mr. Bill O'Reilly. It has obviously been enough to get the most liberal of candidates into power the last few elections. I guess that explains why Democrats are running everything now...

By the way, ever hear of a guy named Rupert Murdoch?? No, you should look him up because he DOES own the media, and he ain't exactly liberal...

Re:Question

[teh_chrizzle]

look up the mayor of chicago's involvment in the 1960 kennedy/nixon election. many believe that kennedy and his bunch stole the election due to voter fraud in texas and illinois. nixon didn't publicly call for a recount becuse he thought it would tear the nation apart.

Re:Question

[tbannist]

Of course, a different point of view is that you won't find one because it doesn't happen.

Suppose for a second that votes were actually being deliberately flipped using Diebold voting machines. What would you expect to be different? The "liberal" media actually has said very little about the possibility of vote theft. In fact, the has been no mention of the possibility of malfeasance by the major news media. It's only a few sporadic small papers, some online papers, and some magazines that have even looked at the issue.

Unlike the propisition that the systems have been deliberately rigged, there is direct evidence, which you ignore, to show that your theory doesn't fit the facts. You make allowances for partisanship on behalf of the people counting the votes, and then insist that the media is making a big deal about it. Guess what it is a big deal. It is simply unacceptable for the campaign directors of any political party to be solely in charge of counting the votes. It invariably creates the appearance of impropriety even if there is none. It's a significant problem and anyone who think it isn't either has an agenda or is in denial.

Re:Question

[d3ac0n]

Wow. Tha's insightful commentary there. /sarcasm

Since when does the political leanings of the boss dictate the leanings of the Employees? It's a matter of a culture among media elites. Not a conspiriacy of corporations. Most members of the main stream media lean hard to the left. So hard that it colors all the reporting they do. This has been proven with several studies down over the last 30 years. See here: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~digger/305/media_bias.h tm

Here's a salient quote from the article "Evidence of how hard journalists lean to the left was provided by S. Robert Lichter, then with George Washington University, in his groundbreaking 1980 survey of the media elite. Lichter's findings were authoritatively confirmed by the American Association of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1988 and 1997 surveys. The most recent ASNE study surveyed 1,037 newspaper reporters found 61 percent identified themselves as/leaning "liberal/Democratic" compared to only 15 percent who identified themselves as/leaning "conservative/Republican."

Go ahead and spend some time going through all the links on the site and reading up on it a bit. The Liberal bias in the American media (and the BBC, as recently admitted by them in a leaked internal memo) is obvious. Rupert Murdoch be damned, the Lib Media Elites will report it the way they want to. If you can't see it then you have been so blinded by partisanship that I can't help you.

Re:Question

[geekoid]

I think he mean reently, and probably with electronic voting machines.

In hindsite, i would find it more believable that Nixon believed he still wouldn't win.

I base this on Nixon, not his party.

Re:Question

[NMerriam]

Leftists aren't known for letting the facts stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory

As opposed to the conspiracy to hide WMDs in Iraq?

Re:Question

[Mister Whirly]

"If you can't see it then you have been so blinded by partisanship that I can't help you."
It takes one to know one, huh?

And I would read the articles you cited, but you know, the whole Liberal Media thing makes them irrelevant.

Of course there is bias in media, but claiming it is all one sided is not only naive but dangerous... This is why I choose to get my news from multiple sources in different countries..

"The most recent ASNE study surveyed 1,037 newspaper reporters found 61 percent identified themselves as/leaning "liberal/Democratic" compared to only 15 percent who identified themselves as/leaning "conservative/Republican."
All that proves is that Conservative/Republicans lie more..

Re:Question

[spyinnzus]

I'm glad your solution to people not listening to you is to scream louder.

Re:Question

[d3ac0n]

"All that proves is that Conservative/Republicans lie more.."

Hmm... let's see here.. I... J... K... Ahh here we are. Kooks! Alright Mister Whirly, we will just file you right in there with your buddies from Kos and the DU. You should feel right at home. Oh, I nearly forgot. Gotta line that file with tinfoil! Comfy? Good. Have fun!

Re:Question

[d3ac0n]

I'm glad your solution to speech suppression is to mis-characterize the issue. You should join the media. You'd fit in well.

Re:Question

[Mister Whirly]

In your eyes, I was already filed there to start with, no sweat off my back... I'm not the one pretending to not have a bias, so I hardly care what you think of me... If calling me a Kook makes you rest better at night, then by all means do... I mean it is much easier to just discount everything someone says than to actually think about it, right?

Re:Question

[d3ac0n]

"I mean it is much easier to just discount everything someone says than to actually think about it, right?"

And this from the person who refuses to even read the studies done over the last 30 years that clearly prove my point. (And no, there aren't any studies that prove the opposite, I've looked.) You make my point every time you post.

You aren't about finding the truth and seeing both sides. I was really hoping you were, and would prove my suppositions wrong. If you had, I would have glady apologized for a mis-characterization and taken my lumps. Apparently my suppositions were correct. You truly have no interest in even discourse, you only want to try and marginalize me so that the facts won't get debated.

One of your buddies already modded my first post as a Troll, forcing me to re-post the data. But that's what I would expect from Liberal kooks. "Free speech for me but not for thee", Eh Mister Whirly? Oh don't worry, I won't mod you down, no matter what you say. Not now, not ever. I'd much rather have your special brand of political ignorance on full display for all to see. It makes pointing out your bias so much easier.

Oh, and in case anyone else here thinks I'm overly biased, I DON'T LIKE THE VOTING MACHINES EITHER! I think there is far too much potential for breakdown and freaky software issues to trust them. However, I think the reporting on them is WAY too biased to the left. For some reason, when discussing voting machine problems, it's always "Democrats are getting screwed by those Wascally Wepublicans!" not "E-Voting is proving itself to be problematic at best, perhaps we should step back and re-evaluate our options before diving headlong into this."

See the difference? One is politically biased ranting based on kooky conspiracy theories, and the other is reasoned discourse based on actual evidence. If we could get away from the crazed partisanship and back to actually studying the real problem, then maybe we could come up with some solutions to recommend to our duly elected leaders. As it is now, nothing is going to be accomplished and we will continue down the path towards complete usage of these questionable devices.

Re:Question

[Mister Whirly]

If there had been this much hot air around in the time of dirigibles, maybe the Hindenburg Tradgedy would have never happened... You should re-read your own post and try to follow your own advice. Apparently you are much better at telling people what to think than actually doing it yourself. Have a nice life!

Re:Question

[Damvan]

"but Leftists aren't known for letting the facts stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory.)"

Nice, accusing Leftists of conspiracy theories in the same message you are putting forth your own conspiracy theory of how the Media is out to get the conservatives.

Nice spin.

Re:Question

[Mister Whirly]

BTW I did read some of the articles you linked to. The most interesting one stated -

The findings include:

  On select issues from corporate power and trade to Social Security and Medicare to health care and taxes, journalists are actually more conservative than the general public.

  Journalists are mostly centrist in their political orientation.

  The minority of journalists who do not identify with the "center" are more likely to identify with the "right" when it comes to economic issues and to identify with the "left" when it comes to social issues.

  Journalists report that "business-oriented news outlets" and "major daily newspapers" provide the highest quality coverage of economic policy issues, while "broadcast network TV news" and "cable news services" provide the worst.

And this is from an article referenced by the one you sent me... Looks pretty bad for your Liberal Media Template theory...

Re:Question

[tbannist]

Um.. No. In fact there is a large amount of data which shows that my "theories" ARE fact. It was modded as a troll by Free Speech Suppressors fairly quickly, so you may have missed my earlier post with the link to several studies showing that there is indeed a Liberal media bias in America. My opinion is borne out by scientific study and fact.

Studies carried out by conservative institutes, paid for by conservative political funds, and used for conservative political purposes. With such impartial credentials who could doubt the results?

Occams Razor dictates that the simplest answer is most likely the correct one. What is more likely; That a national conspiracy involving Diebold, The Republican party, and THOUSANDS of election workers of all political stripes banded together to hand elections over to the Bush and the Republicans, OR, that a company has made an inferior product that sometimes causes irregularities in the voting records?

I love Occam's Razor games. However, what you've done is create a strawman argument. First you need to add the "unfortunate" declaration by the Diebold that he was personally going to hand victory in Ohio to Bush. Then you subtract the election wokers of all political stripes, because they're not involved. Then you add Diebold employees who admit to having secretly modified the code days before an election occured, and having been deliberately lied to about what the patch did, and being instructed to keep the changes secret from the election officials. Now which explanation is simpler? That the liberal media is making this stuff up, or that just maybe there's something the should be seriously investigated.

Oh right, you don't give a fuck as long as your side is winning, asshole.

Re:Question

[jtcm]

Since when does the political leanings of the boss dictate the leanings of the Employees? ... Most members of the main stream media lean hard to the left. ... Rupert Murdoch be damned, the Lib Media Elites will report it the way they want to.

Although I'm certain that most reporters _do_ lean to the left, they're not always permitted to express their views. Check out this video about Fox News suppressing a report about bovine growth hormone in milk.

Or look at these:

• internal Fox News memos - quote: "They were issuing edicts to the reporters to control what they could say and how they could say it."
• more Fox News whistleblowers - nice cross section of Fox News cutting people off, also former Fox News employees talking about the "mindset" at Fox News. (i believe the above link is a smaller piece of this video.)

Also, in regard to the first link (about the bovine growth hormone story) see the brief wikipedia entry about Jane Akre (my emphasis):

FOX did not dispute that it tried to force Akre to broadcast a false story, but argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports. This would be the sixth time that FOX had used this argument in court.

So, do Rupert Murdoch or John Moody have control over what their reporters say? From where I'm sitting, it looks like an emphatic YES.

Re:Question

[ezeri]

Studies carried out by conservative institutes, paid for by conservative political funds, and used for conservative political purposes. With such impartial credentials who could doubt the results?

Nope, done by UCLA, a bastion of libral professors and students.

Re:Question

[tbannist]

Ah, I found it. Frankly I think the methodology of that study is flawed, it didn't find that media has a real liberal bias as much as it found that the media is more liberal than the average politician, and therefore by extrapolation the average voter based on the number of times they cited a politician's speeches.

That methodology just seems fraught with potential problems.

Re:Question

[tbannist]

Oh and an additional note: it seems the professors who conducted this "research" are both former members of a conservative think tank who set out to quantify how much of a liberal bias there was in the media.

Re:Question

[krell]

" it seems the professors who conducted this "research" are both former members of a conservative think tank who set out to quantify how much of a liberal bias there was in the media."

Which puts them on a same par as those from FAIR who "document" conservative bias: they're all just guys who are angry that everyone else does not share their own opinions, let alone express them in the media.

Well duh

[nosredna]

Maybe the machines know that nobody would vote against Christ.

Oh, it's Crist? Hmm... well, it's still 84% of our savior.

Re:Well duh

[HoboMaster]

"...AND the Beatles!"

*chin stroking*

[MrSplog]

is this not just a case of "if you look hard enough for something, you'll find it"? i'm sure, if they fancied it, they could find a suitable amount of republican supporters who also had similar problems and the article could be twisted that way. don't get me wrong, i'm all in favour of a bit of republican bashing, but i think it's best if we stick to the provable and not resort to Fox News style "some say...".

Re:*chin stroking*

[Basilius]

Then show me an article claiming the reverse... I'm happy to believe it, but I do not recall there EVER being an article published showing errors in electronic voting machines in the US where the error favored a democrat candidate.

Nice summary

[Mayhem178]

The article summary is misleading in ways that would give CNN a hardon.

It says nothing about why the terminals were malfunctioning, which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time) and nothing to do with some right-wing conspiracy. In fact, the article implies that it was one machine in particular, not all of them.

Way to spin it to work the /. hordes into a raging frenzy.

Re:Nice summary

[thatguywhoiam]

It says nothing about why the terminals were malfunctioning, which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time) and nothing to do with some right-wing conspiracy. In fact, the article implies that it was one machine in particular, not all of them.

I'm not so sure. While I have not seen the interface in question, every example I've seen of electronic voting machines always employs HUGE buttons on the screen, to minimize this issue. Even if the registration point is off, as long as the button is, say, twice as high as your finger thickness, I can't see an issue.

Way to spin it to work the /. hordes into a raging frenzy.

Maybe - but its just too important to ignore. Any weirdness around voting machines in this US midterm should be heavily scrutinized.

Re:Nice summary

[unity100]

which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time) and nothing to do with some right-wing conspiracy.

It is not rocket science to deduct the machines were intentionally miscalibrated - especially when the producer of voting machines happens to be a republican backing company.

Re:Nice summary

[rbochan]

The article summary is misleading in ways that would give CNN a hardon....

Except that CNN isn't reporting on it. In fact, about the only references about this issue I've seen about this have been on foreign news sources. The Register is in the UK and another linked video was on a .nl server...

Why is it that we in the USA can't get news about what the fuck is happening on our own country except from foreign/tiny news services?

Re:Nice summary

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Not too much of a conspiracy theorist, but how do you get "the article implies that it was one machine in particular"? Here is a direct quote:

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly.
also
In Miami-Dade, two machines have been taken out of service during early voting. No votes were lost, Sola said.

Now here are the cases the article specifically talks about:

1) Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.
2) Joan Marek, 60, a Democrat from Hollywood, was also stunned to see Charlie Crist on her ballot review page after voting on Thursday. ''Am I on the voting screen again?'' she wondered. ``Well, this is too weird.''
3) Mauricio Raponi wanted to vote for Democrats across the board at the Lemon City Library in Miami on Thursday. But each time he hit the button next to the candidate, the Republican choice showed up. Raponi, 53, persevered until the machine worked. Then he alerted a poll worker.

So besides the "its common", etc they also specifically talk about three specific cases in three seperate cities. Unless, that one machine is really making the rounds I don't see how it could be just one.

Re:Nice summary

[GodfatherofSoul]

Too bad these miscalibrations never seem to help Democrats get elected.

Re:Nice summary

[goldspider]

You're right, it's not rocket science. It's unproven speculation.

Re:Nice summary

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

What the hell do you expect a conspiracy to look like? Voting machines with "DEMOCRATIC VOTES DISABLED" flashing brightly on the screen?

Idiot.

Re:Nice summary

[SpeedBump0619]

You know, If I were going to try to be subtle about hacking these machines I would do it pretty much exactly this way. Randomly bias towards the candidates I want selected, in the knowledge that most people don't really check their ballots thoroughly.

What I'd need though is an easy out in case it gets detected...some way to allow the blame to be placed on something that can be 'fixed'. Maybe the touch-screen alignment? That's a great idea...I'll just make it so that my random bias hack is temporarilly disabled when the touch sceen calibration routine is executed. That way the pollsters have a simple fix that seems reasonable. I'm sure it will be one of the first things they try if anyone complains.

Re:Nice summary

[Khomar]

It is not rocket science to deduct the machines were intentionally miscalibrated - especially when the producer of voting machines happens to be a republican backing company.

Give me a break! I can just as easily say that all democrats are communists and are helping the Chinese plot an invasion to get some American territory (and women!). Have we become so cynical that we believe the absolute worst of everyone? (Answer: yes) I think everyone needs to take a chill pill for second. Just because a company can does not mean that they will. It is just as likely that it was a genuine mistake that just happened to appear slanted toward Democrats. Remember, we all have a tendency to find patterns that conform to our personal bias. Until there is actual proof of intentional tampering, we need to give the benefit of the doubt. Remember, it is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty (regardless what the IRS does).

This inane bashing of the other party has got to stop. For every attack on Republican ethics, I can guarantee that I can name one for the Democrats. They both seem to be crooked and immoral. The fact is that I don't like either side right now. The Republicans seem to causing more harm than good and have lost their foundation. The Democrats offer no real solutions than to say they would do "better" than the Republicans. Both sides seem to be borderline incompetent (okay... no, the Democrats are incompetent -- this election should probably be won by a landslide, but they insist on shooting themselves in the foot). Until we actually start debating what is actually best for the country instead of what will best push forward our agenda or political party, we will only continue to tear ourselves apart.

Why can't we just focus on the problems with electronic voting rather than turning it into a political debate? Why can't we just say that the design is flawed and should not be used? A company can have a bad or flawed design without malicious intent. Anyone who doesn't think so hasn't programmed in the business world very long.

Re:Nice summary

[Dexx]

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/ 31/0429256

Re:Nice summary

[ScentCone]

Too bad these miscalibrations never seem to help Democrats get elected.

Uh huh. And, you know that they have not, how, now? For all you know it's the fact that the Republican candidate (in the example shown) has his name sort alphabetically differently than the Democrat. If similar calibration errors WERE showing up on the odd machine in areas where the Democrat DOES get elected, are you certain there'd be as much noise? How are you certain? It's all microscopic numbers of anecdotes against the backdrop of hundreds of thousands of votes. Which doesn't make a single vote less important, but it puts in a little perspective.

Besides, voting irregularities that favor dems tend to be a little more in the old fashioned analog variety: like, dead people, felons, and illegal immigrants voting because you don't even have to show a freakin' ID! Or, tires being slashed on vans rented by Republicans to shuttle voters to the polls... you know, timeless stuff that was just as good decades ago as it is today. I'll put that crap up against a half a dozen (yanked out of service!) poorly behaving touch screens any day, in terms of election impact.

Re:Nice summary

[Mister Whirly]

"I can just as easily say that all democrats are communists and are helping the Chinese plot an invasion to get some American territory (and women!)."

Slow down Cowboy! That's a job for Fox News!!

Re:Nice summary

[ScentCone]

I'll just make it so that my random bias hack is temporarilly disabled when the touch sceen calibration routine is executed. That way the pollsters have a simple fix that seems reasonable. I'm sure it will be one of the first things they try if anyone complains.

Uh huh. And how is you're hacking the brains of the poll system workers that actually cause the candidates to appear in a given order in the machines? You know, the machines running the same software in different districts with different candidated from different parties listed in different ways? Machines that long after the vendor has last touched them are set up for a given polling place's configuration by the election board officials who actually deploy them. In many of the heavily democratic districts where the most conspiracy noise originates, it's heavily democrat election boards that actually set up the voting machines and the candidate listings. Look at the debacle in Maryland's primaries, where the mess with the machines was the result of really poor deployment by staffers that had nothing whatsoever to do with the equipment vendor.

Randomly-hiding errors that bias Republican in machines that are headed towards an unknown district at some point in the future? Wouldn't it be easier to implicate Elvis or aliens, or perhaps the effect of John Kerry sticking is foot squarely in his party's mouth yesterday? That's a lot more straightforward than what you're suggesting, to say the least.

Re:Nice summary

[d3ac0n]

I'm with you on that last point all the way Khomar.

A wise man once said "Never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to incompetence." (I'm sure someone here will inform us of who that was.)

The truth is, these machines are just poorly designed and implemented, irrespective of who made them or the makers' political affiliation. The discussion needs to be "How can we ensure the accuracy of our election process." Not "The other guy is trying to steal the election, it's a conspiracy!"

Re:Nice summary

[NMerriam]

achines that long after the vendor has last touched them are set up for a given polling place's configuration by the election board officials who actually deploy them.

You are aware that one of the complaints about Diebold systems in 2004 was that they pushed out software updates to some areas right before the election, right?

Re:Nice summary

[smooth wombat]

Why is it that we in the USA can't get news about what the fuck is happening on our own country except from foreign/tiny news services?

You mean like this article?

Please note that the date of the article is from October 28th. Three days ago. The Register just now picked up on it.

Re:Nice summary

[ScentCone]

You are aware that one of the complaints about Diebold systems in 2004 was that they pushed out software updates to some areas right before the election, right?

Right before the election, and still without any ability to correlate a given machine to the district in which it would be actually used, and before the machine was loaded with the slate of candidates. Unless Diebold's also working on time travel technology - which I think they'd use a little more creatively than by mis-aligning displays on old, refurbished, and over-used displays - that's a total red herring.

Re:Nice summary

[tbannist]

It's clear the reporter doesn't believe that's really true, it's just the excuse that was given to him.

Re:Nice summary

[radtea]

The truth is, these machines are just poorly designed and implemented, irrespective of who made them or the makers' political affiliation.

JUST poorly designed and implemented?

So that's ok then, is it?

As near as I can tell, rabid partisanship has reached the point in the U.S. where no issue matters unless it is a partisan issue. This would explain all the utterly moronic responses to this article that suggest "this is no big deal because it's JUST gross incompetence on the part of the machine manufacturer. After all, it's not like this is something REALLY IMPORTANT like Republicans versus Democrats!"

Except that to anyone who hasn't been lobotomized by party loyalty, nothing is more important than a reliable, trusted electoral system.

And the terrifying thing is that there does not seem to be anyone like that left in the United States.

Re:Nice summary

[NMerriam]

Right before the election, and ... that's a total red herring.

So you ARE aware that they do push out uncertified software updates at the last minute. I'm glad we both agree your earlier statement was wrong. Making sure everyone has their facts straight is generally not considered a red herring.

Re:Nice summary

[Khomar]

As near as I can tell, rabid partisanship has reached the point in the U.S. where no issue matters unless it is a partisan issue. This would explain all the utterly moronic responses to this article that suggest "this is no big deal because it's JUST gross incompetence on the part of the machine manufacturer. After all, it's not like this is something REALLY IMPORTANT like Republicans versus Democrats!"

I think you are completely missing the point. This is a very important issue, but it is not a political one. It is not the fault of the Republicans or the Democrats. It is a flawed design -- pure and simple. That is what those "utterly moronic" posts are trying to say. This is not to diminish the problem at all -- quite the contrary. The political climate is bad enough without providing additional ammunition to the partisan bickering. I don't think these machines should be used at all until a better design can be developed.

Except that to anyone who hasn't been lobotomized by party loyalty, nothing is more important than a reliable, trusted electoral system. And the terrifying thing is that there does not seem to be anyone like that left in the United States.

Exactly, and this is where the debate should focus. That is exactly what d3ac0n and I are trying to say, but somehow you missed the point -- and apparently, there are at least two people in the United States that are "like that". The whole point is to steer the conversation away from politics and toward solving the actual problem. Is it possible to design an electronic voting machine that is reliable and secure?

Re:Nice summary

[phantomlord]

Note: I live in NY and I've never seen a Florida ballot other than the butterfly ballot that got so much attention back in 2000.

Here in NY, all of our parties are listed on the ballot in the same order. Row A is Republican, Row B is Democrat, Row C is Conservative, Row D is Liberal, Row E is Independence, etc (at least I think that's the order off the top of my head). I find it plausible that the touch screen could be out of sync and is thinking you're pointing somewhere else. If you swap Row A and Row B, does the Democrat now get selected instead of the Republican?

The above is a very plausible explanation of what could be causing the problem. A lot of us here are programmers, engineers, etc... why are so many people jumping to conclusions before we even test for what could be causing the problem? Oh, right... because so many here care more about political ideology rather than the truth despite what they claim. Remember back in 1998 when Hillary Clinton went on Good Morning America and said her husband didn't have had an affair, it was just a vast right wing conspiracy. /cough open your eyes folks.

Re:Nice summary

[ScentCone]

Making sure everyone has their facts straight is generally not considered a red herring

But bringing up the issue of patches to the machine code as if that were the same as the manufacturer having a hand in placing one candidate's checkbox above or below another is a red herring. And since the issue at hand (mis-aligned old touchscreens) does revolve around which candidated is placed where on a list set up by local election officials, blurring the differnce between those two totally separate activities is indeed herring-mongering.

Re:Nice summary

[Khomar]

Going off topic here, but....

The problem I see right now with the Democratic party is that they are not really offering any alternatives. The only definite thing I am hearing from their camp is the desire to repeal the tax breaks, but it was those tax breaks that got the economy back on its feet. There is now more tax revenue specifically because of those tax cuts -- more money in individuals hands to invest back into the system.

When it comes to the war, they say to pull out the troops, but I have not really heard a coherent plan for how to achieve a solid ending for the war in Iraq. What is their plan for fixing Social Security? What is their plan for dealing with terrorism going forward? What is their plan for solving the border problems with Mexico? I am not saying that the Republicans solutions are acceptable either (especially on the last point), but the Democrats haven't offered anything... better or otherwise.

Re:Nice summary

[Johnny5000]

Right before the election, and still without any ability to correlate a given machine to the district in which it would be actually used, and before the machine was loaded with the slate of candidates. Unless Diebold's also working on time travel technology - which I think they'd use a little more creatively than by mis-aligning displays on old, refurbished, and over-used displays - that's a total red herring.

Well, no.

They know who will be running in all districts, so it's rather simple to say:

if (candidate1 = "Freddy Snerdlick")
      AllVotesGoTo(candidate1)

Think they'd engineer a vast conspiracy of election fraud and not think of that one?

Re:Nice summary

[dangitman]

It says nothing about why the terminals were malfunctioning, which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time) and nothing to do with some right-wing conspiracy

So, where did you get the information that it was touch-screen calibration at fault? Why didn't you link to it, so slashdotters could be better informed?

Re:Nice summary

[Pharmboy]

ahem, the "wise man" you are refering to is Napoleon. Not sure if "wise" is the first word I would use to describe him. The quote is a bit off, but close enough (just missing "that"). Still, a very good quote, and one I have posted in my office.

I also have "Make any task idiot-proof and someone will just make a better idiot" posted.

Re:Nice summary

[ScentCone]

Think they'd engineer a vast conspiracy of election fraud and not think of that one?

No. I think they wouldn't engineer a vast conspiracy in the first place. Shoddy or poorly maintained equipment, cheap polling place operators/budgets, user error, witless/contextless reporting ... all of these things happen all the time, and are what's happening here. No "vast conspiracy" can possibly be kept that secret - it's simply impossible in the setting in question. Why mentally create that image when the simple reality of overused gear, stupid polling place policies, and somewhat biased reporting more than explains what's being talked about?

Re:Nice summary

[unity100]

yea. unproven like the the gig they pulled in the last election.

Re:Nice summary

[forgotten_my_nick]

> Way to spin it to work the /. hordes into a raging frenzy.

We are assuming that the people making the voting machines are idiots. Lets assume for a second they are not. In which case they should of built the machine such a thing happening.

One machine I have seen had large buttons to stop possible miscalibration along with random placement of candidates and had up to three times to verify who you picked before finally casting your vote.

But another poster has the right idea. If your going to rig the machine then do so to make it look like an accident. I mean you only have to look at 2000 election where Al Gore got -16,000 votes in one district and only showed up by a random audit.

Re:Nice summary

[unity100]

"insatiable megalomaniac that has screwed the french revolution's ideals" would be the more fitting description for napoleon.

Re:Nice summary

[CAIMLAS]

I see four potential causes for these kinds of things:

1) The Democrat voters really are stupid, whether it's hanging chads or touchscreens
2) It's a vast right wing conspiracy, and the dozens/hundreds of laymen coders at the voting macine companies have willingly sold out their country.
3) These machines are simply not up to the task (what, you mean you've not been irritated by an improperly configured touchscreen before that mis-records your touches? it's more often than not for me.)
4) The members media, intent on providing ammunition for the potential claim of "the Republicans stole the election!" both after the 7th as well as in 2008, are only reporting the cases of Democrats having problems. (I didn't know a single conservative/Republican journalism major in college, but quite a few liberals. In a very conservative state. I don't think that's a fluke.)

Re:Nice summary

[SEAL]

Before I start, let me just say:

- I'm not a registered Democrat, but rather I vote for the people I best identify with. Right now, the Republican party has strayed pretty far from my own views.

- I served in the U.S. military and I have nothing against the troops, or the proper use of them as needed for the defense and security of this nation.

Now, on to your points:

The only definite thing I am hearing from their camp is the desire to repeal the tax breaks, but it was those tax breaks that got the economy back on its feet.

Please cite your sources.

Republicans love to tout this methodology but the simple fact is that uncontrolled deficit spending is BAD for the economy except in the very short term. I don't have a problem with tax cuts IF Congress matches those tax cuts with spending cuts. Neither major party does that, however. They fear losing votes when they have to make a cut in someone's pet project or program for their state.

Yes the Clinton administration had faults but it proved you can maintain a strong economy while avoiding a deficit. Granted, part of this was due to availability of the line-item veto, but the administration was fiscally responsible.

I don't really care if the Democrats want to repeal tax breaks or if they actually man up and cut spending. Either way, balancing the budget is better than continuing to live in fantasy-land.

When it comes to the war, they say to pull out the troops, but I have not really heard a coherent plan for how to achieve a solid ending for the war in Iraq.

The Iraq War Part 2 is a war we shouldn't have been involved with in the first place. I don't see the need for a "coherent plan". There is no solid ending. We've seen it before in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union saw it in Afghanistan. You can't impose your will on religious zealots in a land where they live there and you have no desire to. Get the troops home and let Iraqis sort out how they want to run their country. It's what they want. It's what most of the world wants. And it's what oh... 60+ percent of the U.S. citizens want. Not to mention, getting out of Iraq would save around 170 million dollars a day, keeping that economy on its feet like you mentioned.

What is their plan for dealing with terrorism going forward? What is their plan for solving the border problems with Mexico?

Post 9/11 resources should have been and should still be spent going after the source(s) of the attack, which were not Iraqi. Not to mention, U.S. troops being committed in Iraq has emboldened Iran and North Korea, and generally weakened U.S. leverage in matters of foreign policy. I would like to see enhanced focus on Afghanistan and homeland security, rather than Iraq.

I'm not a Democratic candidate, but it's really not difficult to offer alternatives to the rhetoric the Republicans are feeding this nation right now.

Re:Nice summary

[SEAL]

The pubs right now are too evil to allow to stay in power, I really can't think of any other word that adequately describes Bush's term in office.

Fascist.

Re:Nice summary

[jelle]

Interestingly, the DieBold ATM machines with touch-screens _never_ have this problem...

Re:Nice summary

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes the Clinton administration had faults but it proved you can maintain a strong economy while avoiding a deficit. Granted, part of this was due to availability of the line-item veto, but the administration was fiscally responsible.

Yeah, sure, that's why the Federal debt fell during his term... OOPS... Not the case, the Federal debt increased EVERY year! Perhaps that touting of a surplus was in fact fiction?

Oh and ignore the fact that Federal tax revenues skyrocketed after the tax cut package...

Re:Nice summary

[Moofie]

Yep. All you have to do is proceed from the assumption that there's nothing wrong, and nobody's trying to cheat the election.

I think that's a fairly lousy assumption. More to the point, I think election systems should be designed based on the assumption that people are going to try to rig them, and that that should be a hard thing to do.

With Diebold, that seems to be a VERY lousy assumption.

Re:Nice summary

[demachina]

Granted it is quite possible these were just a few cases of machines being messed up, and should be no cause for alarm. But you know what, it COULD be a cause for alarm and your attempt to dismiss it is just as bad if not worse than the people who are trying to hype this in to a conspiracy. It COULD be an attempt to rig the election. The fact is there have been seriously irregularities in 2000, 2002, 2004 and will probably be again this year and people keep just downplaying them like you just did, and the potential for abuse is getting worse each election.

For some reason Americans have the enormous capacity to disbelieve anyone would steal one of their elections. I hate to break it to you but election rigging is widespread throughout history and throughout the world. It has happened in the U.S. before, in Kennedy-Nixon in 1960 in Kennedy's favor and again in Florida in 2000 to favor the Governor's brother. If there was ever an election that was going to be stolen its this one, because the party in power is in serious trouble, they are drunk on their power and they have this righteous self delusion that they are the only ones capable of governing. Those are the kind of people who do rig elections and still sleep at night.

I hate to break it to you but if these machines needed to be recalibrated multiple times during the course of the election they are fundamentally flawed and should be thrown out. It would be relative easy for someone to figure out that they could improperly calibrate a percentage of the machines in one parties favor and manipulate an election, and if anyone notices they just say what you just said.

The fact is all voting systems have a margin of error, but these electronic systems have a staggeringly high margin for error, and even worse potential for intentional abuse especially all the ones that have no paper trail for a proper recount. I think going back to paper ballots with X's on them and teams of little old ladies counting them would be just wondeful, thank you.

The other damning thing about electronic voting is they are a massive drain on the resources of the local governments deploying them, and our Federal tax dollars. They are proving to be ENORMOUSLY expensive to maintain, often timea 10X what was promised. Once a local governmet picks one and buys them they are at the complete mercy of a near monopoly that can often charge as much as they feel like to keep them working from now on.

Our motto for evoting machines, just like most of our politicians, should be THROW THE BUMS OUT.

P.S.

Not sure the Republican's need to rig the election since they pulled out their secret weapon. Mr Skull and Bones himself, John Kerry. John could you please keep your stupid ass mouth shut, or better yet join the Republican party. You are the single greatest weapon in th Republican campaign to inflict Fascism on us. I, as have most people, have had enough of you, because you are a completely clueless preppy rich kid, just like the ahole sitting in the White House. How the hell did you make as far as you have in politics when you can't seem to open your mouth without saying something stupid.

Re:Nice summary

[SEAL]

1) Don't confuse Deficit with Debt.
2) Take a look at Debt held by the Public, not including Intragovernmental Holdings.

For the lazy (from your very own site):

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm

scroll down to the bottom. Notice a trend during the Clinton years?

Here's another one for you:

http://www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf

People like you are the reason this country treats money like a dot-com most of the time.

Re:Nice summary

[Weirsbaski]

It says nothing about why the terminals were malfunctioning, which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time) and nothing to do with some right-wing conspiracy. In fact, the article implies that it was one machine in particular, not all of them.


According to wikipedia:
Plausible deniability is the term given to the creation of loose and informal chains of command in government. In the case that assassinations, false flag or black ops or any other illegal or otherwise disrespectable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any connection to or awareness of such act, or the agents used to carry out such act.

Which brings up the question- why do the random and non-intentional Florida voting issues always seem to favor one specific party over the other?

Re:Nice summary

[toddestan]

It doesn't have to be a vast conspiracy. You're dealing with the closed source software that is essentially running on a black box. This could be easily pulled off by a handful of people with access to the code that runs on these things.

Re:Nice summary

[kreyg]

Yep. All you have to do is proceed from the assumption that there's nothing wrong, and nobody's trying to cheat the election. I think that's a fairly lousy assumption.

I seem to recall some off-the-record statements last time around to the effect of, "We didn't cheat! And even if we did, it wouldn't matter, because everybody cheats!" It seems like a very lousy assumption indeed.

Re:Nice summary

[LQ]

... had everything to do with touch screen calibration
So why don't they use buttons like on ATMs? Display the proposition and list the valid choices next to real buttons?

Re:Nice summary

[SEAL]

Osama or one of his successors is going to say the U.S. has no nerve whether we remove our troops today or 20 years from now. How long would you have us stay? Indefinitely?

As for your comment about Vietnam, how would you have resolved the deadlock? You blame the cost in lives on the withdrawal. I blame that cost on the mistake of our involvement in the first place, just like the current Iraq war.

This is the nature of guerilla warfare. The "resistance" fighters are like a mosquito that keeps stinging you over and over again. You swat it and another one shows up. Eventually you leave the area. Like I said in my first post: the U.S. military cannot hope to DEPLOY somewhere and achieve victory over guerilla fighters who LIVE in that location. You can achieve specific goals (say: Desert Storm's goal of driving Iraq from Kuwait territory).

Well, we achieved our defined goal for this Iraq war: seek & destroy WMDs. While that was accomplished, it wasn't the result Bush and Rumsfield wanted. So they decided to change to arbitrary goals as they moved forward. This is a recipe for a quagmire.

In contrast, there are cases like Israel, which fights against a resistance that is trying to push them out of their own home (or at least what Israelis consider their own home). They will never give up that fight. EVEN THEN it drags on, year after year. They have no option to leave their conflict, but we do.

Pulling our troops from Iraq WILL happen. Anti-U.S. elements will launch a full scale PR campaign when it happens. This is unavoidable. Being stubborn and leaving the troops in an unwinnable situation does not change the end result.

Re:Nice summary

[CAIMLAS]

Diebold doesn't really have any competetors.

Re:NOW ...

[OrangeTide]

We need to implement software to emulate hanging chads. first we need a high end physics library to simulate a piece of paper near perfectly.

If things keep going this way...

[Van Cutter Romney]

In 2008 Presidential Elections the machines will read

Please cast your ballot for

1. George W. Bush
2. George W. Bush

Re:If things keep going this way...

[ackthpt]

In 2008 Presidential Elections the machines will read
Please cast your ballot for
1. George W. Bush
2. George W. Bush

Which would just go to show how fixed they are, eh? As George W. Bush wouldn't even be running, but his name would still be there because the flash memory conveniently still had these stubborn latent patterns...

Re:If things keep going this way...

[Van Cutter Romney]

Genuis!!!!!!

Re:If things keep going this way...

[krell]

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. (Produces a box containing two colored chads, one for Blue George W. Bush and one for red George W. Bush) This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You vote for blue Bush, the story ends, you awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You vote for red Bush, you stay in Halliburtonland, and I show you how deep the fox-hole goes. (Pause. Neo reaches for the red chad.) Remember: all I'm offering is the truth, nothing more. (Neo votes for the red George W. Bush)

Re:If things keep going this way...

[SpaceLifeForm]

There won't be an election in 2008 if the voters don't toss the bums out in six days.

Third Party Veriification?

[krell]

And then the Greens or Libertarians sweep it with 113% of the vote.

Re:User Error

[Thansal]

I am glad I am not the only person that thought "must be user error".

Look, I am not saying that there is not a conspiracy here, however this is not much proof of anything bad going on (aside from shody machines). 2 annecdotes from a paper specificly reporting that the machines are showing a republican bias (wich leads me to belive the paper probably has a democrate bias), showes nothing.

meh,
nothing to see here, move along.

Re:I can't see the problem here

[ackthpt]

why would I want to be taxed out the ass to help a bunch of lazy people on social programs.

Yeah, Halliburton should find their work like the rest of us, rather than have a former executive (Dick Cheney) in the Whitehouse handing them no-bid billion $ contracts, because they were the only company which could respond to the call readily (makes you wonder how far in advance they were told to get ready and by whom.)

Not *too* shocking

[eserteric]

Having worked with a few touch-screens I have to admit that problems with the calibration are frequent, and often amplified if the user isn't that technically savvy. When the screen is a little out of synch it's usually easy to tell how (ie: registering a little low), but even when people can clearly see that what's registering is about an inch off of what they're pointing at, they still won't adjust their pointing.

On a side note: what, something built under a government contract having cheap parts? No wai!

Will monitors look into this?

[smooth wombat]

With the Justice Department deploying up to 800 monitors in 20 states on election day, will they be able to investigate claims such as this?

Unfortunately, from the sound of things, their role will only be involved in voter intimidation or access to polling places.

But wait, good news everybody! Wan Kim, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said that people shouldn't be concerned about electronic voting machines. Why? Because many groups have reviewed the machines, including the National Assocation of Secretaries of State.

"Regardless of what machine a voter votes on Election Day -- and there will be dozens and dozens of different type of machines across the country that are being used -- they have confidence that once the results of those elections are certified, you can bet on those results as being correct, because of the safeguards in place."

Hey Kim, why don't you send a few folks down to Florida to see what's going on then come back and say those words with a straight face. It doesn't matter if the votes are certified if the machines didn't record the proper votes in the first place.

Re:Will monitors look into this?

[Slagged]

Your tinfoil hat is crooked. Super glue works best.

Re:Will monitors look into this?

[Mister Whirly]

No, superglue will break down the reflective properties, allowing THEM to mind control you if your head is turned to the right angle. Always use double stick tape to secure. And remember - SHINY SIDE OUT!!!

Re:Will monitors look into this?

[ScentCone]

Hey Kim, why don't you send a few folks down to Florida to see what's going on then come back and say those words with a straight face

Which words will the people from Florida be saying? How about: there were some heavily used machines with out of synch touch screens, and as soon as poll operating officials saw the problem, those machines were taken out of use. Something like that, perhaps? Or do you have evidence that a voter who pointed out the problem with the display was told "too bad" and that they had to live with the machine's display registration problem. No? I see.

Unfortunately, from the sound of things, their role will only be involved in voter intimidation or access to polling places.

So, since you have heard the "sound of things" and how 800 federal agents are out intimidating voters, perhaps you can point to an example of that? Just one? No? I see.

If people wonder, sometimes, why a lot of the leftier side of the demographic doesn't seem to get elected, or sounds particularly shrill while talking about the process, you've just provided a grand example. By the way, you can purchase commercial-size rolls of aluminum foil really cheap at Costco.

Re:Will monitors look into this?

[smooth wombat]

How about: there were some heavily used machines with out of synch touch screens, and as soon as poll operating officials saw the problem, those machines were taken out of use.

Wrong. Read the Miami Herald article. In case you didn't, here is what Broward County does:

Broward poll workers keep a log of all maintenance done on machines at each site. But the Supervisor of Elections office doesn't see that log until the early voting period ends. And a machine isn't taken out of service unless the poll clerk decides it's a chronic poor performer that can't be fixed.

Also, from the same article:

Marek corrected her ballot and alerted poll workers at the Hollywood satellite courthouse, who she said told her they'd had previous problems with the same machine.

Poll workers did some work on her machine when she finished voting, Marek said. But no report was made to the Supervisor of Elections office and the machine was not removed, Cooney said.

So no, in only a few cases are malfunctioning machines removed. In other cases the machines were left in place and no attempt was made to see if they were performing correctly.

So, since you have heard the "sound of things" and how 800 federal agents are out intimidating voters, perhaps you can point to an example of that?

You incorrectly parsed what I said. What I was saying was that the monitors would only be there to see if voter intimidation was taking place or if access to a poll was not being granted to legitimate voters. Not that the monitors themselves would be intimidating the voters.

If people wonder, sometimes, why a lot of the leftier side of the demographic doesn't seem to get elected, or sounds particularly shrill while talking about the process, you've just provided a grand example.

Considering the disaster this country is in because of what the right side of the demographic has done, I'll be happy to be associated with the lefties even if I'm a righty.

If wanting a secure voting process where anyone eligible to vote can vote without fear of intimidation or their vote not being recorded correctly, or any other shenangans, is considered a leftist point of view, your comments demonstrate why the right is so hated.

So?

[slapout]

"Florida voters using electronic ballot machines are having persistent problems choosing Democrats in early elections, the Miami Herald reports."

I have trouble voting for Democrats too. :-)

Re:So?

[Yusaku Godai]

You wouldn't if you lived in Florida. Honestly, Catherine Harris?

Re:So?

[blake3737]

watching too much fox news will do that to you.

is that so....

[revery]

"The touch-screen gizmos seem strangely attracted to Republican candidates. One voter needed assistance from an election official, and even then, needed three tries to convince the machine that he wanted to vote for Democrat Jim Davis in the gubernatorial race, not his Republican opponent Charlie Crist.

Well, if that's true, then why aren't Republicans having trouble voting for Republican... oh... never mind.

--
I think I misunderstood the assignment.

Wonderful

[Quantam]

I see this is gonna be another election that'll be decided by the courts (even moreso than the 2000 one)...

If you think

[jzuska]

If you think Voting machines are hackable.

Try hacking one on election day. /see ya in gitmo

Re:If you think

[The_Wilschon]

You do not know anything at all you damn fool.

Well said.

Blue map of death.

[krell]

Once they bar the door to Dan Rather, who is trying to get in to show everyone the touch-screen result archives from the 1972 election for comparison, the anchors will watch as the big map of the US goes all blue. They'll quickly get Howard Dean, all screaming with joy, on the video feed for his comments. Then someone looks up at the blue screen and asks "Guys, didn't we just convert this system to Windows?".

Re:If they are smart enough to hack voting machine

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

from what I hear hacking the machines doesn't really take much thinking. . . (unless you hack it to play chess http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/06/dutch-voting-ma chines-hacked-to-play-chess/)

my best friend's brother's cuzin's buddy said

[xzvf]

The Register read an article at the Miami Herald saying people were having trouble voting. The Miami Herald reported the experience of some (one or two users) and some hearsay about poll workers saying it happens all the time. How about the journalist at the Miami Herald trying to get more information. Both Democrat and Republican reps are at every polling station. Election officials are known people. Other people are voting early. Put some meat on the story.

Re:my best friend's brother's cuzin's buddy said

[Ardipithecus]

SAT style,

Miami Herald : Journalism

as

Bush :

a. Quantum Physics

b. Brain Surgery

c. Concert pianist

d. Chemical Engineering

Re:Statistical improbabilities

[Chanc_Gorkon]

That would depend. this may sound like a joke, but here goes.....

What if there was a issue on one part of the screen and that part always had democrats on the left and republicans on the right?? What if the button areas are too big/too small? This is just anecdotal. Touch screens are inaccurate sometimes. I don't think that the software would even need to be hacked to do this. If I were to "rig" an election, I would definitely not make it viewable to the voter! ;)

where they actually came from...

[Veetox]

These machines were actually refurberished from old ones used by Sheetz (Or some other gas station with make-your-own-sandwich consoles). They keep selecting bologna for you and end up giving everyone a big pickle...

Re:User Error

[jmyers]

I would bet on user error as well. I'm 100% for hand marked paper ballots counted optically, but I am willing to bet that no matter what voting tech in used, paper, punch cards, touch screen, etc. The voter error rate is probably about the same. Its just that since we have had some real close elections the media is starting to focus in on a problem that has existed forever.

It's insane

[zecg]

Why would anyone steal the elections by miscalibrating the touchscreen? It shows, it produces news reports, it's messy. The elections can be stolen, it's been demonstrated pretty convincingly, without anyone registering anything. Oh, and this.

Scenario for 2008 presidential elections

[Van Cutter Romney]

Message: Please cast your vote for

1. Hillary Clinton
2. Dick Cheney
3. Ralph Nader.

(Voter goes in, selects 'Hillary Clinton')

Message: Thank you for voting for Hillary Clinton

(Voter turns away - goes out of the booth)

Message: Sorry, I'm changing your vote to 'Dick Cheney'. That should be the right choice. Thank you for voting!

Re:I can't see the problem here

[__aaclcg7560]

... so now why would I want to be taxed out the ass to help a bunch of lazy people on social programs.

Your generous support is helping the lazy rich stay of politics so they can give their money to the lazy people on social programs. You just gotta love being a middle class taxpayer.

fucked up that decimal point...

[radarsat1]

For some reason this reminds me of the movie Office Space. You know the part where he intended to hack the system to put all the little tiny sub-cent transactions into a savings account, but he fucked up and put the decimal point in the wrong place and suddenly they were transferrings hundreds of dollars instead of cents..?

This "changing the votes" thing is just too obvious to have been done on purpose. I bet there was a hack in place to change some of the votes, but someone fucked up and it starting changing WAY too many of the votes and it's become blarringly obvious that there's a something wrong...

Link to original story

[inverselimit]

at the Miami herald, without two layers of spam: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/editoria l/15889697.htm

Let me be the first to say...

[Aqua_boy17]

That I live in Florida, you insensitive clods.

Seriously though, these reports have been around locally for a couple of days. What I find interesting though, is that they invariably are from Democrats saying their votes were changed when they checked the summary prior to submitting. There's not one report of a Republican having the same problem that I've heard of yet. So should I take my tin foil hat with me to the polls this year, or not? I'm really, really hoping we're not going to be the laughing stock of the entire world again this year, but I have serious doubts. This used to be a great place to live.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[slightlyspacey]

It still is a great place to live. That is *strange* though that only Democrats seem to be having problems with the voting machines. This could point to a few possibilities:

1) Random computer error
2) It's a Republican conspiracy to rig the elections
3) Republicans are having problems too but the Miami Herald is only mentioning the problems affecting the Democrats
4) Democrats aren't REALLY having problems but are using it as an excuse for potential court battles
5) Republicans were able to design the machines to be really confusing to only Democratic voters
6) A cosmic ray particle came down and caused a bit flip (single event upset) inside the voting computer just as the vote was being cast (0 - Straight Democratic, 1 - Straight Republican). Ooh, the possibilities .... cosmic ray particles with political alignment and there is nothing we can do to stop them - except go back to punched cards and chads :)
7) Republicans studied hard, did their homework, and made an effort to be smart, and were able to vote. Democrats didn't and got stuck in the voting booth.
8) Us folks who live in Florida really are too stupid to vote. I mean really, who builds their houses in swamp land anyways? Sounds like something from Monty Python:

"Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands."

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Aqua_boy17]

That is *strange* though that only Democrats seem to be having problems with the voting machines.

I lost the link, but there was a report I saw on Tuesday of the same exact thing happening in Texas. And it was also a Dem's vote that was changed to Republican. I haven't seen a single report yet of the opposite happening. Nor have I seen any good explanation of why it doesn't happen both ways. I also don't know if I'm buying the 'screen shift' explanation as it sounds a little, well (excuse the pun) shifty.

I'll probably be early voting in the next day or so and I'll be yelling pretty loud and calling everyone I know if this happens to me. Loved the Python quote BTW, and as many times as I've seen the movie, I never thought of applying it to us. Maybe I'll walk into the polls whistling "Always look on the bright side of life"...

Texas

[GregVernon]

The same thing is happening in texas. News Report

Re:Texas

[jdgeorge]

The same thing is happening in texas. News Report

If the machines were inhibiting votes for Republicans, this would be indicative of an urgent legitimate problem requiring investigation. However, this is clearly just whining by a bunch of people who shouldn't be voting anyway, and should be dismissed out of hand.

The fact that this same issue appears in various places across the country doesn't make it a significant problem unless it is detrimental to The Party.

Re:Texas

[GregVernon]

I suppose you have a point, the republicans will carry texas probably no matter what. But, may I ask, how come these people should not be voting? Because they are democrats? Because they go against the norm of the community? We cannot simply dismiss votes because they are different; that, sir, goes against what this country stands for. Now you say if the machines are inhibiting republican votes, it would somehow be more serious then it is now. How come this is any different? Peoples votes are being changed! Their view points are not being registered! That is a situation that needs to be looked into -- regardless of what party is being benifited. Finally, you suggest that it is only a serious problem when it is detrimental to "The Party". What are more concerned about: the party or your personal liberties?

Re:Texas

[GregVernon]

Wow, screwed up the formatting on *that* one!

Re:Texas

[jdgeorge]

I suppose you have a point, the republicans will carry texas probably no matter what. But, may I ask, how come these people should not be voting?

I deeply regret that my comment seemed something other than ironic. I respect and agree wholeheartedly with your viewpoint, and I apologize for leading you to believe otherwise. It is unfortunate than many on Slashdot appear to adhere to the perspective that I attempted to represent satirically with my comment, which undoubtedly made me seem more likely sincere than sarcastic.

Obligatory Shenanigans

[nschubach]

I swear to God I'm going to pistol whip the next guy who says, "Shenanigans."

Hey Farva what's the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks?

Re:User Error

[k_187]

I would think that overreacting to a single malfunctioning voting machine would have already done that.

Re:Liberal Vote Counting Procedure

[PopeZaphod]

Conservative Vote Counting Procedure 1. CORRUPT THE SYSTEM EVERY STEP OF THE WAY (they win)

Re:If they are smart enough to hack voting machine

[eyeb1]

because it's not about jobs or money .. it's about ideology ..

although for republicans being selfish/greedy by nature and not wanting to share with their neighbor .. ie. pay taxes is an money issue ..

Futurama, anyone?

[AikonMGB]

VM: "You have selected: Democrat!"

You: "No, I didn't!!"

"I'm almost positive, you did!"

Aikon-

They're after me Lucky Stars!

[Stanistani]

Shenanigans?

I'll be grabbin' my shillelagh, sure and begorrah!

*Dances a jig*

Re:If they are smart enough to hack voting machine

[Quantam]

I'm not sure if you were just kidding or not, but if this is actually the Republicans' doing, I'd debate whether you could call such a miserable job "smart enough to hack voting machines" :P

Re:User Error

[zippthorne]

"making voting idiot proof" shouldn't mean making it easier for idiots to vote.

Hugo Chavez might win for Governor...

[dtjohnson]

Maybe the Diebold's keep bringing up Republicans but I'll bet that the Sequoia
electronic voting machines keep showing 'H. Chavez' for every
choice.

Same thing going on in Texas

[gurps_npc]

Here is an article in a local Texas newspaper discussing the same thing happening in a small town in Texas. Texas, being mostly republican, might have been a 'test' case. Texan article

Re:Three words to stop stuff like this from happen

[s20451]

Three words to stop stuff like this from happening

"Move to Canada"

I still don't understand this

[Morinaga]

I still don't understand why there's a push to go to an electronic voting system. Why not use touch screen voting machines to print paper voting records. You can then verify your vote and you have a physical document for recounts. No fucking chads, no conspiracy theories, handicap friendly, and it encourages the voter to double-check their entries. It's an effort to go from the horse drawn carraige to teleportation. Let's not try to make the quantum leap and stick with a god damn car.

For the sake of argument

[Epeeist]

Assume that these, and other machines, are being deliberately hacked to give one party or another the victory.

Presumably someone will eventually spill the beans and say what has been done, by whom and for how much money. What will American voters, judiciary and legislature do then?

Re:For the sake of argument

[3waygeek]

Arguably, that's already happened.

it's all lies ..

[rs232]

it's all lies I tell ya, all lies put about by left-wing liberal, pro al-Qa'ida communists ..

Re:it's all lies ..

[geekoid]

so..George Bush?

Drop the FUD: read the ACTUAL Miami Herald Article

[fortinbras47]

Here is the actual Miami Herald article that The Register article is based on.

The headline on the Miami Herald piece? Only minor glitches reported in early voting

Read the full article. You have one woman in Florida who had a problem (or made a mistake), realized the problem, and had it corrected. This is HARDLY voting "shenannigans."

Excerpting from the article:

''It has been fantastic,'' Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Lester Sola said. ``Our ability to process voters accurately and at a faster rate really has improved.'' To help keep things running smoothly, everything is done electronically, he said. Registered voters can swipe their Florida driver's license or have their voter registration cards scanned to verify they can vote, then sign their names on an electronic monitor similar to those used in stores, he said. While most voters find the electronic machines easy to use, they are not foolproof, as Joan Marek discovered on Thursday at the Hollywood satellite courthouse. After casting her votes, Marek, a Democrat, was surprised to see name of Charlie Crist -- the Republican candidate for governor -- on the review screen. She was able to go back and correct the vote, and alerted poll workers to the problem.

Because if you're going to "steal an election"

[the_skywise]

You want to ensure that your hack shows the voter that he/she voted wrong to "validate" the results...

Sure this has its problems but on the BRIGHT SIDE... How many people voted wrong with the punched cards, didn't check their work and NEVER REALIZED they voted for Pat Buchanan?

Re:Because if you're going to "steal an election"

[eheldreth]

I think this is simple negligence on the equipment designers part. However, if I where going to rig an electronic vote I would show the voter there results and even give them a printed "receipt". You would be counting on the fact that the majority of voters are not going to check, they just push the buttons and leave. That way if the mistakes are caught after the fact I can just say, it was a glitch and the voters had an opportunity to correct it at the polls. It's using the statistics and the laziness of the average American to cover up a much deeper conspiracy.

Come on

[DrTacos]

A technical explanation of the problem is given. The article is slanted almost vertically, you could just as easily find a voing machine with the screen mis-aligned in the other direction that favors democrats and write a seething insane conspiracy story about "the underdog that is so desperate to regain control that...."

If you wanted to cheat why not just tamper with the voting machine to register false votes that are not verified by the user? Or do what both sides have been doing for decades, just have dead people vote.

Re:Come on

[mrmtampa]

I hate to follow dead people at the voting machine!

Re:Come on

[DJCacophony]

you could just as easily find a voing machine with the screen mis-aligned in the other direction that favors democrats

Then do that. Oh wait, you can't, because there are none.
Oh well, we can just read the news reports on machines switching republican votes to democratic votes. Oh wait, we can't, because there are none.

Re:Come on

[falconwolf]

A technical explanation of the problem is given. The article is slanted almost vertically, you could just as easily find a voing machine with the screen mis-aligned in the other direction that favors democrats and write a seething insane conspiracy story about "the underdog that is so desperate to regain control that...."

So go ahead and find one. I wonder how many yoy'll find... 0?

Falcon

Oh, and no I'm not a Democrat. I've voted from Democrats, Libertarians, Reform, and Republican candidates.

Re:Come on

[DrTacos]

Yeah, it's really messy.

Re:User Error

[Drachemorder]

I don't really care about making voting idiot-proof. If you're not clever enough to figure out how to cast your ballot, you're not clever enough to be deciding who should run the country.

Re:Three words to stop stuff like this from happen

[Mister Whirly]

I don't think that the Canaliens want us either...

Self-correcting voting machines

[dircha]

I for one welcome this advance in voting technology.

Our constituents have complained about feeling compelled to vote for Democrats as a matter of intellectual honesty - even conscience. In recent elections some have even reported unwittingly voting for Democrats. We must not allow our system of government to be subverted by the will of the ignorant masses.

The introduction of self-correcting voting machines will see to it that this doesn't happen again. Voters who mistakenly vote for Democrats will have their vote automatically changed to a vote for the correct candidate: the Republican.

This advancement will usher in a new age of democracy. Scientists tell me that in the future we may even be able to limit the need to involve voters: we'll just have the machines vote for the correct candidate in the first place!

Situation and Response Appalling

[radtea]

Touch screens are used routinely in computer assisted surgery, control of fluoroscopy systems and any number of other mission-critical applications.

Only an application developed with an absolutely staggering degree of incompetence and ignorance of basic touchscreen design constraints would be subject to anything like the issues described here. This is particularly true given that, unlike the medical applications of touchscreens, virtually 100% of the screen real estate in e-voting applications is available for BUTTONS. A 1 cm apparent shift on a touchscreen is a HUGE miscalibration, and any resonable e-voting design should have buttons that are on the order of 10 cm on a side to accomodate the full range of voter motor control and perceptual limitations.

Far worse than the gross incompetence of the second raters who designed these machines, is the complacency so clearly evident in the responses seen here.

Basically people are saying, "Yeah, touchscreens are lousy technology and we have to expect this kind of problem with them and that's ok."

Why, exactly is that ok? Because voting doesn't matter? Is it just some kind of bizzare ritual to you people, passively engaged in, like voting in the old Soviet Union?

Even if this is just an example of criminally poor software design, all that it proves is that no jurisdiction should ever use electronic voting because it is demonstrably impossible for the losers who are implementing it to get even the most rudimentary aspects of user interface design adequately robust.

And the American people should be up in arms, perhaps literally, rather than making excuses for the liars and cheats who are leading them into oblivion.

widespread reports of visible vote-switching

[doom]

I saw a pre-release version of this documentary not long ago: Stealing America: Vote by Vote that talks about large numbers of reports of this vote-switching behavior from the 2004 election. All of the complaints were about Democrat votes being switched to Republican, none went the other way.

And speaking of documentaries there's another one making the rounds of HBO right now: Hacking Democracy.

Re:widespread reports of visible vote-switching

[jfengel]

All of the complaints were about Democrat votes being switched to Republican, none went the other way.

Does that say more about the nature of the political parties, or about the nature of the people putting together the documentary?

Re:widespread reports of visible vote-switching

[doom]

jfengel wrote:

All of the complaints were about Democrat votes being switched to Republican, none went the other way.

Does that say more about the nature of the political parties, or about the nature of the people putting together the documentary?

As I remember it they were working with stats based on complaints to the national Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS), but I'm sure if you try hard you can work up a hypothesis about how Republicans would never complain about such a thing (remember, not "less likely", you need "not ever").

Re:widespread reports of visible vote-switching

[jfengel]

I know that many hard-right blogs were full of accusations of Democratic voter fraud. Not necessarily with vote-switching, but with intimidation, encouraging illegal immigrants and felons to vote, etc. There was also that bit in 2000 with Gore trying to stop Florida from counting late-arriving military absentee ballots. So I'd be surprised if there weren't accusations of actual vote-switching as well.

Not trying to take a stance against Democrats here; I'm a Democrat myself. But if they're missing the accusations of fraud against the Democrats then they're only telling half the story; the accusations must at least be debunked.

Re:widespread reports of visible vote-switching

[doom]

jfengel (409917) wrote:

I know that many hard-right blogs were full of accusations of Democratic voter fraud. Not necessarily with vote-switching,

Which is the subject at hand, but why stop there?

but with intimidation, encouraging illegal immigrants and felons to vote, etc. There was also that bit in 2000 with Gore trying to stop Florida from counting late-arriving military absentee ballots. So I'd be surprised if there weren't accusations of actual vote-switching as well.

Not trying to take a stance against Democrats here; I'm a Democrat myself.

Oh right. Just a reasonable Democrat, repeating unsubstantiated smears. And making up new ones as you go.

Re:widespread reports of visible vote-switching

[Bing Tsher E]

Shouldn't you be on DemocraticUnderground.com right now, deleting comments and user accounts?

Here's more on the subject

[gorehog]

http://www.kfdm.com/engine.pl?station=kfdm&id=1734 3&template=breakout_dayportvideo.shtml&dateformat= %25M+%25e,%25Y This story is from Texas and reports the same thing. Seriously, let them steal it. Here's a metaphor. If you steal enough from a store the store shuts down and there's nothing left to steal. If they keep stealing elections the democracy will shut down. Then we can put the filthy bastards up against the wall. Keep stealing and manipulating shit assholes. Eventually the levels of discontent that you are generating will be unstoppable and small pockets of violence and rebellion will break out all across the nation. Police will stop taking orders, military units will stop taking orders, the stolen government will have no support, revolutionaries will free prisoners just to overtax your system. It'll be like the unwinnable war on drugs but far, far worse. IN that scenario your only hope will be to find SOME governing group (similar to Sinn Fein, or the PLO) and beg them for mercy. Don't count on their promises because the memories of the oppressed are long and harsh. It might become a long and bloody experience to re-establish democracy in America, and the blood of the thieves who are committing the crimes will be the currency we use to pay for the renovation. It's gonna look like Latin America up in here before it's over. So keep your powder dry people. Those of you who oppose the tyranny that is descending over our great nation must learn how to handle and maintain weapons, must learn how to build weapons. And you must strike when the iron is HOT, when the military is exhausted and the government is unpopular. And now, a quick song ---sung to the tune of Woody Guthrie's Hard Travelling Diebold's stealing elections, I thought you knowed. Diebold's stealing elections on machines with unknown code. We dont need no double dealing, electronic vote stealing. Diebold's stealing elections, Lord. Diebold's stealing our votes, the right that makes us free. Diebold's stealing our votes, oh cant you see. How can they say I'm free if their machines can choose for me? Diebold's stealing our votes, Lord. Diebold's stealing our votes, I thoought you knowed. They've been shredding the paper trail at the end of the road. It doesn't matter who you choose, when you're sure you're gonna lose. Diebold's stealing our votes, Lord. I'm gonna vote with pen and paper I thought you knowed. I'm gonna see it counted at the end of the road. I'm gonna vote with pen and paper so I know that there's a record. And I'm gonna go vote my conscience Lord. We've been having some hard voting I thought you knowed In California, in Florida, and in O-hi-o Voting can sure be scary when the counting's done binary Diebold's stealing our votes, Lord.

Re:Here's more on the subject

[gknoy]

Even though I disagree with the severity of your predictions, I believe that your argument would be more easily read if you used more than one paragraph, and added some line breaks when posting lyrics. Otherwise, people will just skim over most of it.

White space and punctuation are what make prose readable.

Re:Here's more on the subject

[gorehog]

Ugh, I know I know. I clicked on HTML instead of Plain Old Text by mistake.

I reposted further down.

We need 'Operation American Freedom'

[dtjohnson]

The 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' has worked so well that maybe we need the French and the Canadians to invade the United States for an 'Operation American Freedom' to bring democracy to the United States and depose the evil dictator. Then there would be pictures of cheering Americans dancing in the streets and showing off their purple fingers dipped in the purple inkwells when they voted in an actual honest election.

Original News Story

[Alien54]

original story via this journal entry

Re:Original News Story

[StikyPad]

I believe you are mistaken, sir. The original story is here.

Cause

[DoofusOfDeath]

Because, Mr. Colbert, sometimes voting machines have a conservative bias. :)

Yes, yes, yes!

[Al Dimond]

I know this is just a silly mod-parent-up post, but parent is dead right. It would be cheaper, more reliable and more intuitive than touchscreens because touchscreens lack tactile feedback. It also means that you don't have your display screen getting smudged.

The tactile feedback thing is important. I operate ATMs much more quickly and confidently when the buttons have a nice keyboard-like "click" feeling to them. The ones with those cheap non-reliefed buttons that barely push in suck, and often make loud beeping noises to compensate for the poor tactile feedback. Touchscreens are the worst; during the delay before the action happens there's always a moment of unsureness.

You'd just have to make sure to build it right, of course. Definitely an LCD flat panel, and make sure it's not set back from the plane of the buttons, or else risk a butterfly-ballot style problem, where the user's position relative to the machine could affect the way the choices line up (that can be a problem with ATMs, both of the touchscreen and non-touchscreen variety, because they have cheap, tiny CRT screens that are set back from the buttons/touch sensors). And probably some other design considerations for legibility; I personally don't think it's too much to ask to have voters read a number next to a candidate's name and push the button corresponding with that number (numbers not directly on the buttons where they could wear off), but some people would probably complain. And you'd still have to test the machines for sticky, non-debounced or simply broken buttons. Nothing that an arcade manager couldn't handle.

And in Texas....

[gorehog]

http://www.kfdm.com/engine.pl?station=kfdm&id=1734 3&template=breakout_dayportvideo.shtml&dateformat= %25M+%25e,%25Y
This story is from Texas and reports the same thing.

Seriously, let them steal it. Here's a metaphor. If you steal enough from a store the store shuts down and there's nothing left to steal. If they keep stealing elections the democracy will shut down. Then we can put the filthy bastards up against the wall.

Keep stealing and manipulating shit assholes. Eventually the levels of discontent that you are generating will be unstoppable and small pockets of violence and rebellion will break out all across the nation. Police will stop taking orders, military units will stop taking orders, the stolen government will have no support, revolutionaries will free prisoners just to overtax your system. It'll be like the unwinnable war on drugs but far, far worse. IN that scenario your only hope will be to find SOME governing group (similar to Sinn Fein, or the PLO) and beg them for mercy. Don't count on their promises because the memories of the oppressed are long and harsh. It might become a long and bloody experience to re-establish democracy in America, and the blood of the thieves who are committing the crimes will be the currency we use to pay for the renovation. It's gonna look like Latin America up in here before it's over.

So keep your powder dry people. Those of you who oppose the tyranny that is descending over our great nation must learn how to handle and maintain weapons, must learn how to build weapons. And you must strike when the iron is HOT, when the military is exhausted and the government is unpopular.

And now, a quick song

---sung to the tune of Woody Guthrie's Hard Travelling

Diebold's stealing elections, I thought you knowed.
Diebold's stealing elections on machines with unknown code.
We dont need no double dealing, electronic vote stealing.
Diebold's stealing elections, Lord.

Diebold's stealing our votes, the right that makes us free.
Diebold's stealing our votes, oh cant you see.
How can they say I'm free if their machines can choose for me?
Diebold's stealing our votes, Lord.

Diebold's stealing our votes, I thoought you knowed.
They've been shredding the paper trail at the end of the road.
It doesn't matter who you choose, when you're sure you're gonna lose.
Diebold's stealing our votes, Lord.

I'm gonna vote with pen and paper I thought you knowed.
I'm gonna see it counted at the end of the road.
I'm gonna vote with pen and paper so I know that there's a record.
And I'm gonna go vote my conscience Lord.

We've been having some hard voting I thought you knowed
In California, in Florida, and in O-hi-o
Voting can sure be scary when the counting's done binary
Diebold's stealing our votes, Lord.

Re:And in Texas....

[kldavis4]

This message has been intercepted by the Ministry of Motherland Security. Your IP address has been logged and we have your DNA. Please stay right where you are. We'll come and pick you up shortly.

what is de-syncing ..

[rs232]

"Having worked with a few touch-screens I have to admit that problems with the calibration are frequent", eserteric

It's always nice to have an expert opinion but according to the article the machine kept listing Republicans only, making it difficult to delect a democrat. How does going out if sync influence the summary of candidates. I too have used touchscreens for over two years and *never* seen de-syncing.

"Another voter who went Democrat across the board kept finding Republicans listed in the summary screen."

"often amplified if the user isn't that technically savvy.", eserteric

"One voter needed assistance from an election official, and even then, needed three tries to convince the machine that he wanted to vote for Democrat Jim Davis"

was Re:Not *too* shocking

Re:User Error

[q-the-impaler]

I early-voted in Jacksonville, FL and had no problems with the machine I used. I did have a problem with the height of the machine as I am 6' 1" and the machine was set for someone about 5' 2". But all that caused was an exaggerated slouch. I believe that the problems are probably user error and ignorance. It's not like they couldn't use paper ballot, because they offer both.

Re:Statistical improbabilities

[Chanc_Gorkon]

BINGO!

Missing references

[NineNine]

And, The Register mentions an article in the Miami Herald that it doesn't reference at all. The Register has stories that are about as bad quality as the articles on Slashd... oh wait.

Great article.

Re:So if the dems take the house and possibly sena

[doom]

Given how much that we still hear bitching about the validity JFK's election, it's likely that we will hear those cries loud and long.

No one was talking about the JFK election until the Republicans felt the need to blow some smoke about the RFK articles in Rolling Stone. "The Democrats do it too!" is one of their talking points... or it was before it became clear how lame that sounds.

Accessible voting system the only way to go

[inca34]

The only way I see to make voting fair and accurate is to be able to access, or "view" your vote as it was counted during and post election. With just one simple requirement per vote: a living, registered voter.

Sure, say someone hacks the DB. So what? People go back and check how their vote was counted, tabulate the results on their own home PC if they wanted (heck we can recount so fast your head will spin), and if it's different... well then you've got a problem. Deal with it. At this point it'd probably pay to have good logs and receipts. Nothing impossible.

Heck, with all the money being spent on voting machines, why not spend it on bringing the internet to everyone, buying computers for libraries and generally Making the World a Better Place(tm)? Inevitably some Republicans (and Dell) will get rich, but on the whole it's probably worth the price for true democracy. What gives?

Re:Accessible voting system the only way to go

[spitzak]

The problem with that is that it allows vote buying (ie "prove to me that you voted for so and so, or you are fired!" (or divorced, or dead, or kicked out of the union, or whatever).

Though I doubt vote buying in the modern day will lead to much effect on the election (anything large enough would be detected because somebody would talk), it does mean violence and threats and thus is a bad thing.

There are schemes using cryptography that would allow you to prove that your vote was counted correctly yet be unable to prove how you voted, but they are far too complex for the average voter to understand and believe in.

Re:Accessible voting system the only way to go

[inca34]

Your last comment is funny. I don't believe my vote will be counted correctly, no one will be able to prove I ever even voted, and it's already far too complex for me [the average voter] to understand and believe in. =)

More seriously, if you limit the places to vote/check (like a library) security is less of an issue.

This points to problems with fragmented elections

[harvardslacker]

The article in no way implies that only one machine was problematic. Machines at different locations (e.g. "African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale" and "Lemon City Library in Miami") and on different days exhibited problems.

Moreover, none of these calibration problems seem to have favored Republican candidates. Considering the small sample size, it's certainly possible that this is random, but I don't blame people for being suspicious.

So, "hardons" notwithstanding, there are definitely problems. Even if there is, indeed, no "right-wing conspiracy" involved, it's a serious issue that people are having so much trouble voting for the correct candidates. If these problems occur merely between steps during on-screen voting, imagine how many other problem must also be occurring at these and other locations between on-screen voting and actual vote tallying, especially when there is no voter-verified paper trail!

I'm a big fan of the Internets; like the President and most of you, I use the Google, shop online, etc. However, this certainly doesn't encourage me to support electronic voting.

I think the real solution to this mess is to nationalize the voting system. In the US every state and even every county has its own voting system, with different machines, voting dates, ballot fonts, software, etc. Either a large number of these areas need to voluntarily work together to get some large-scale, robust voting protocols (electronic or not), control of setting election protocols should be shifted to the national government, or the national government needs to step in and a) set some standards, and b) pony up some money to help finance the establishment of solid voting protocols that can be used nationwide.

Re:Three words to stop stuff like this from happen

[gt_mattex]

..Canaliens...

I knew it! Damn Canadians are just too peaceful to be human!

And even...

[Junta]

Not have networked voting machines, have them with integrated printers that spit out a scan friendly sheet, and then the user can review the printout, and feed it to the scannning vote counting machine (that people already are stuck trusting).

Or, alternatively, stop wasting tax money on voting machines instead of sharpies.

I hate both parties, too, but...

[Mariner28]

I heard a news report (on NPR - so take it with a dose of healthy skepticism if you wish) that in 2004 and in this years primaries, in states with Diebold electronic voting machines there was not a single report of votes intended for Republicans being recorded for Democrats. The researcher being interviewed stated that if it was a programming glitch or mistake, it should have been random and affect both parties equally...

Re:I hate both parties, too, but...

[LWATCDR]

You are assuming that it isn't effecting them both equally.
1. It may be a very small number of machines that where not calibrated correctly. So they are statistically insignificant. Think of it this way if only one machine is mess up how could it be equal?
2. Is it being accurately reported? As I said Democrats my jump to the conclusion that it is a fraud while republicans may not.

poorly calibrated order of candidates ..

[rs232]

"You seem to have never used a touch screen in your life. Allow me to explain: They are always poorly calibrated peices of shit due to the seperation between the display and the sensors"

Like how, it's all electronic. At first boot you perform a calibration. After that it stays that way. I have *never* seen the de-syncing problem. How does the de-syncing problem alter the order of the candidates.

was Re:Where is my tinfoil hat?

Law of probablilty

[pkbarbiedoll]

Nice retort, but if your theory is true why do we ever only hear of votes being shifted from D to R, not the other way around?

Re:Law of probablilty

[mrfunnypants]

If the alignment of names is the same in all machines, then a shift in one direction will favor a set, i.e. republicans. It would be a conspiracy if it was not consistent. Of course you knew that, just like the original submitter of the article. The conspiracy should be is Slashdot getting as bad as news sources in trying to sensationalize stories?

Re:Law of probablilty

[mfrank]

That's because dead men don't tell tales.

Malice not required.

[Kadin2048]

While I agree that people have a hard time knowing what to push I wouldn't blame the screens. If someone can't cobble together a reliable touch interface that doesn't need to be calibrated in the field, for a system will run only one application, they are either incompetent or purposely screwing up. The latter would be my guess.

I disagree. Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to idiocy, carelessness, ignorance, stupidity, incompetence, or laziness; particularly in combination with each other.

That the machines are just poorly-thought-out, poorly-engineered, poorly-constructed, poorly-maintained piles of shit, seems far more likely than such an obvious conspiracy.

I suspect that people cutting corners and generally being lazy or careless results in the deaths of more people every year than intentional, thoughtful acts of evil do. Probably a lot more.

There is a finite amount of evil in the world, but an infinite amount of stupidity.

Re:Malice not required.

[khallow]

You missed self-interest.

Re:Malice not required.

[Broken scope]

Occam's razor?

Re:Malice not required.

[Iron Condor]

Every sufficiently evolved incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Re:Malice not required.

[Max Threshold]

That the machines are just poorly-thought-out, poorly-engineered, poorly-constructed, poorly-maintained piles of shit, seems far more likely than such an obvious conspiracy.

Then it's still criminal negligence on a grand scale, and the conspiracy is among the apologists.

Re:Malice not required.

[wfberg]

I disagree. Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to idiocy, carelessness, ignorance, stupidity, incompetence, or laziness; particularly in combination with each other.

Never attribute to failure in technology that which can be adequately explained by human error.
Grandparent poster merely stated that blaming the screens for getting un-calibrated is a cop out, which it is.
Some flesh-and-blood human being coded the thing such that it malfunctions.
It's probably just due to the way voting machines are made in the first place - bid on government contracts that pay millions of dollars, and have some 13-year old Vietnamese kid with no formal education put together the software to run on it.
But blaming the screen??

Re:Malice not required.

[The Master Control P]

If the errors were due to undirected incompetence in engineering, would it not be logical to expect a random distribution of errors? Instead we seem to be seeing the opposite: The errors are not random, but are instead favoring one party's candidates.

Consider Diebold's ATMs, which are very reliable and function exactly as intended. They've demonstrated that they aren't incompetent if they don't want to be. Now consider the [?]contrapositive[?], they are incompetent if they do want to be.

Re:Malice not required.

[QRDeNameland]

Occam's razor?

Actually, the adage of "Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice" is known as Hanlon's razor.

However, I propose that if one accepts Hanlon's razor, then it follows that faking stupidity or incompetence provides the perfect cover for malice. Or as Carol's answer (from the reference above) states: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Use this razor with care.

Re:Malice not required.

[_KiTA_]

That the machines are just poorly-thought-out, poorly-engineered, poorly-constructed, poorly-maintained piles of shit, seems far more likely than such an obvious conspiracy.

I would agree, except there has been no confirmed reports of these machines messing up in the Democrat's favor.

Every single reported failure of these machines has swung towards the Republicans.

Every. Single. One.

Re:Malice not required.

[Broken scope]

I prefer safety razors actually.

Re:Malice not required.

[WilliamSChips]

The bigger problem is that the guy who runs Diebold publically stated he'd deliver the election for Bush.

Re:Malice not required.

[iq in binary]

There is a finite amount of evil in the world, but an infinite amount of stupidity.

Stupidity doesn't get along well with happy coincidence.

That the voting problems just happen to be with democrats voting along the party lines, again; in a state notorious for voting fraud isn't a product of stupidity. That this problem smiles on a political party who just so happens to have the sympathies of the manufacturer of this particular problematic machine, not a product of stupidity. That this problem might occur in other states and districts, definitely not going to be a product of stupidity. Nothing about this situation alludes to laziness, stupidity, or incompetence.

I'm not saying this is evil, but I see only evidence that points to this being a product of planning and imposed circumstances.

By the way, Ghandi's original quote was "Do not attribute to evil what laziness could easily explain."

And Einstein's original quo........nevermind, it's lost on you anyway.

Re:Malice not required.

[mqsoh]

And to what do you attribute the decision to use thse 'poorly-thought-out, poorly-engineered, poorly-constructed, poorly-maintained piles of shit?'

Re:Malice not required.

[Cyberax]

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." -- Vernon Schryver.

It would be cheaper...

[Junta]

To stick to the damn paper, sharpies, and scanning machines we use in our region today.

Re:It would be cheaper...

[Al Dimond]

Along those lines they say that in Canada they hand-count ballots. But they don't have nearly as many items to vote on in each election in Canada. The voter guide I got here in California is a frickin' tome.

By "sharpies" do you mean permanent markers? How reliable are the scanning machines?

Re:I can't see the problem here

[demigod]

...so now why would I want to be taxed out the ass to help a bunch of lazy people on social programs.

Social programs?

I though most of the money went to Halliburton and few other non-bidders.

Systematic balaot position preference?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

(Part of the following assumes the position of the candidates is chosen by officials, rather than being prescribed by law. I don't know Florida's law on the subject - but some of the coverage of the "butterfly ballot" controversey seemed to indicate that ballot design is the choice of local election officials.)

If a misalignment of the touch sensor with the screen (which would systematically move the touch point in a particular direction) systematically transfers votes for Democrats to Republicans, and not the other way around, it means the ballot was constructed with the Democrats systematically above, or systematically below, the Republicans in balot position. Since moving the touchpoint up would tend to move it to a different, already voted, race, the implication is that they were moved down - which would mean the Ds are systematically above the Rs on the ballot.

That amounts to a systematic bias in the balot design.

Higher ballot position gives the candidate a preference. So such a ballot would be biased toward Democrats when the machines are operating correctly.

So perhaps THAT should be investigated.

Re:Systematic balaot position preference?

[dangitman]

But why the hell would the buttons be so close together that even large amounts of mis-alignment could cause an incorrect vote? That's absolutely terrible design, that should get the manufacturers sued out of business. Somehow, I think the "mis-aligned touch screen" line is just an excuse. We have not heard any technical analysis of these machines, and why the problem was happening. Just excuses from "officials." Either by incompetence or by design, something very wrong is happening here. It should be investigated rigorously and scientifically.

Re:Systematic balaot position preference?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Hear hear!

Oh noes! It so scawy!

[Quiet_Desperation]

The Repubwicans are coming! Theys going to eats my cat and send my grandma to Iraq!

Ah, Slashdot. My daily dose of Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt.

Re:Oh noes! It so scawy!

[geekoid]

so we shouldn't report on issue the effect who runs the country?

F you, pal. Incorrectly working ballot machine are very important, and should be brought to the for front of any news orginization, even slashdot. The is stuff that matters.

Re:Oh noes! It so scawy!

[kaffiene]

Yeah, cause Democracy was getting old anyway.

Good one.

Re:Oh noes! It so scawy!

[aquatone282]

They already got this grandma, the evil bastards!

Re:Oh noes! It so scawy!

[Quiet_Desperation]

F you, pal

Oh, cheer up. Christmas is close. Final Fantasy 12 is out.

Incorrectly working ballot machine are very important, and should be brought to the for front of any news orginization, even slashdot.

Oh, my! You mean the wrong candidate might get in? Oh, wait... they're *ALL* the wrong candidate.

The is stuff that matters.

No it's the not. The politicians don't need to rig the voting machines. The whole idea is silly. The risk/return doesn't work out. They're gerrymandered and moneyed in. The story was overblown.

That's an easy one.

[Kadin2048]

I think people are looking for a conspiracy in all this, particularly a Republican conspiracy. Therefore if an equal number of errors happen from Democrat to Republican as Republican to Democrat, the ones that would be reported are the ones that make it seem most like a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

That just makes for a better news story.

In the end it shouldn't really matter; if the machines aren't working, then they need to be replaced ASAP, whether they're causing erroneous votes for Reds or Blues or Greens or the Elmo For President party.

Re:That's an easy one.

[pkbarbiedoll]

Is that your best guess or can you supply evidence to support your claim?

Re:That's an easy one.

[crymeph0]

The claim of a conspiracy is the more extraordinary claim, and therefore the burden of extraordinary proof falls on you. Do you have any proof, other than a few anecdotes in one local news story, of a vast right-wing conspiracy?

Re:That's an easy one.

[niiler]

And yet, the errors *always* seem to favor the republicans...

When you look at the following factors:

• The ownership of Diebold and other major electronic voting systems by republican fundraisers
• The massive amount of scandal (racketeering, etc...) on the part of the republicans
• The as of yet unexplained discrepancies between exit polling and results in 2004 (BTW, the given explanation that exit polls are always wrong was addressed as being incorrect by a researcher for the Pew Charitable Trusts on NPR last week).
• The refusal of electronic voting companies to open source their code that programmers *not* on their payroll can review the code. (For that matter, why not compile it in a secure environment having democratic, republican, green, and progressive programmers sign off on it, and then distribute the binary using an MD5, or other, checksum?)
• The known documented problems with numerous electronic voting machines (see: here for a summary of links to external news sources).

it seems like a problem is more likely than not.

In fact, it's a little disconcerting that people can shout "conspiracy theory" in order to squash any debate about the problems with our voting system.

Now, on the flip side, Sequoia Systems was recently bought by three Venezuelan businessmen. This could be problematic because of the foreign influence, but as of yet, nothing shady has happened with Sequoia *since* this business deal. (One could just as easily complain that the US has too much influence in foreign elections that use MS operating systems because they are a US owned company.) So in this case, the jury is out until evidence of foul play exists.

Re:That's an easy one.

[pkbarbiedoll]

There is ample evidence of a) the ease in which Diebold voting machines can be patched and b) votes being switched to Republican candidates. Diebolds CEO vowed to deliver the 2004 presidential election to Mr. Bush.

Concerns are already mounting in Texas and Arkansas that votes are being flipped in early 2006 voting.

It's not a conspiracy when so many municipalities conclude that Diebold machines are not fit for elections.

Re:That's an easy one.

[Bing Tsher E]

Diebolds CEO vowed [cbsnews.com] to deliver the 2004 presidential election to Mr. Bush.

No. The Diebold CEO's statement was similar to what the CEO of Ford would have said if a Ford Vehicle was to be used in Bush's inaugural parade.

Essentially he meant 'we are proud to provide the means for the public to vote you into office.'

It's fun to spin conspiracy theories. It's great fun. It's especially fun when your 'side' in a political race is so completely out of touch with the populace that they haven't won many recent elections. It's one way of keeping busy, and an adequate means to avoid facing reality, getting in touch with the voters, and winning elections by representing their will.

Re:That's an easy one.

[pkbarbiedoll]

You picked one out of several examples, which I provided at your request. I have a feeling that no matter how many examples, no matter how much evidence is supplied you will continue to prefer dismissing voting fraud as conspiracy. Becuase when it comes to government, especially the neo-conservative flavored shit we have now, it's so much fun to naysay anything out of the ordinary, even when citations are provided.

Re:User Error

[edward2020]

Sure... The "White Establishment" is the only group of people able to touch a screen or punch a hole. Its all a plot by whitey to ensure that no one else can vote. Is HijackedPublic's post based upon his seemingly racist assumption that only whites have the requisite ability to use touch screens? Is he attempting - himself - to hijack the public into believing that "clever" and "white" are synomonous? Please remember though, I make no accusations and welcome any spelling/grammar corrections. lol

Re:User Error

[HoboMaster]

wow.

Intelligence != race. There are exactly 0 ways in which these two can be called parallel. That's like me saying you can't open the door because it's locked and you saying that's the same as me stopping you from opening the door because you're black. Not analogous.

Also, I believe you've made it quite clear where you stand on the intelligence scale.

Re:User Error

[M0b1u5]

NOTHING is "idiot proof".

A stupid cliche is no basis for constructing machine sof any decription - let along voting maschines.

But let's understand something: the simple ideas are always the best, AND the most reliable, and the simplest, most reliable voting machine is a pen, used on a ballot paper.

Ipso Facto, a complex "voting machine" can NEVER be reliable.

Outbound comms only

[tjwhaynes]

So how are you going to create these off-site valid totals? Because it sounds like you're suggesting that we should connect these machines to some sort of network, which I think would be a bad idea.

If the voting machine is only capable of sending traffic and blocks all in-bound connection attempts, the risk of compromise of the voting box drops. More worrying is the problems of sniffing the traffic leaving the voting machine and injecting extra packets into the stream (to boost or reduce certain vote counts). Such issues could be mitigated by a secure tunnel set up by the voting machine to its target server.

If a voting machine is shipped with a unique cryptographic signature hardwired into the system, then such a signature could be used to sign all voting returns. Done properly, it should be uncrackable in the time period from the election beginning to the close of polling.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

I think you're confusing ATM with drive-in teller

[Mariner28]

According to multiple sources I checked, Don Wetzel invented the ATM in 1968 and it first went into service in 1969.

Either you're confusing ATM's with bank drive-in teller windows, or every ATM location in the late 1940's had an ENIAC with 10,000 vacuum tubes sitting next to the ATM! Of course, they wouldn't have proved very popular since the user instructions would have had to be written in binary, and you would have had to input your withdrawal or deposit amount via toggle switches... CRTs and TTY terminals weren't interfaced to computers til much later. FYI - both the drive-in teller window and the ATM were conceived in Dallas, Texas.

Just like our SkyTrain ticket machines

[necro2607]

This happens constantly with the SkyTrain ticket machines here in Vancouver Canada - I press the "2 zone" button on the touch screen but it thinks I chose 3 zones because the touch screen is not properly in line with what's actually on the display...

The fact that the US is using the same technology for an election really bothers me... It makes me feel embarassed for these people that they aren't able to realize pen & paper is the only reasonable way to properly do an election of such significance. Although, now that I think about it, I just feel angry because it seems much more likely that they know damn well how inaccurate the machines are, and are using it to their advantage.

This article comes just a few days after a /. article describing how unbelievably simple it would be for someone to "hack the vote" and manipulate poll results on electronic voting machines.

Easy fix.

[Ten24]

There's a very easy fix to all these Electronic Voting Machine situations. First, each machine should PRINT out a CLEARLY labeled receipt showing exactly who you voted for.

This would be dropped into a box on your way out. The machine would still keep an internal tally of votes to compare to the final vote count in that county. So why hasn't anyone thought of this yet?

Re:Drop the FUD: read the ACTUAL Miami Herald Arti

[advocate_one]

how many others just blindly voted and didn't check the review screen??? probably just enough for this "manipulation" to tip the balance.

Similar Experience

[zimus]

One voter needed assistance from an election official, and even then, needed three tries to convince the machine that he wanted to vote for Democrat Jim Davis in the gubernatorial race...

I had similar difficulties when attempting to install Windows 98 and ME. And people say computers aren't smart... HA!

Don't hold your breath.

[Kadin2048]

You probably won't find one, because without the conspiracy-theory angle, it's just not as good a story. Then it just becomes some boring discussion about touch-screen calibration; no mainstream press outlet is going to run that, and thus no journalist is going to write it.

The political climate right now basically guarantees a huge response to any story that involves Republicans stealing Democrats' votes. Thus, those are the stories that are going to get written.

Asking for election stories that don't get people riled up and angry, is like asking for news stories about a plane that didn't crash. It's a non-story, thus it never got written; but that doesn't mean it never happened. It's not a "liberal media" thing, it's just a "media" thing. TV news exists to make ratings, newspaper columns exist to sell papers, online articles exist to create page-views and sell ads. You could be a totally apolitical robot and you'd probably still write sensationalistic, bombastic, heavily biased news -- because that's what makes money.

Your .sig

[Mariner28]

Hey - I did hack your system. It was way too easy, though. Not challenging at all.

Nice trick how you re-named your system to make it look like mine. And how you're running the same OS as mine. And you have the same userids as mine. Wow - this is just too much to be coincidence! You must have hacked into mine first! I'm calling the FBI! ;-)

further clarification

[fortinbras47]

Upon further review, The Register article appears to be directly based on this article that came out the day after the article I just qouted. Headline on the later one is "Glitches Cited in Early Voting."

From what I read in this article, several users encountered a miscalibrated touchscreen so that a press on the screen registered in the wrong place. Several voters only caught the error when reviewing their votes on the final page.

It sounds like a small, correctable problem, and pretty damn far from "sheannigans."

From the article:

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

Re:further clarification

[Vitriol Angst]

No, they've only had 6 years and millions of $ to get this right.

Do these things "happen" on your bank teller machine? No.

It's all these "little happy accidents" that add up. They always favor the Republicans. This story may prove to be "no big deal" but already in Georgia, we have reports that peoples ballots are getting thrown out for not using "the right number" from the drivers license.

Look, people are registered to vote by name on a list in each county. Trying to vote in more than one place is a pain, and a felony -- so that is a lot of risk that can only get a few votes for one individual. Meanwhile, there is no penalty for ChoicePoint accidentally throwing out 80,000 ballots in Florida in 2004. Why are these things never tested, or the voters informed with time to respond to questions about their right to vote? Um, because Republicans want to cheat... I think it's obvious.

A poorly registered touch screen could cause a lot of bad votes -- just like a butterfly ballot that has a check box on one side of the paper that doesn't line up with the name. The NeoCons can and do spend a lot of time thinking up these little tricks. Then they get to disparage the stupidity of the Liberal voters in the Media, and drown out people who are upset.

I'm mad as hell -- and there is no possible way for Republican candidates to NOT lose both the house and senate this November if the elections are honest. They have nothing but 100 moral scandals in the news, a failed economy, and two failed wars. They have nothing to win on.

There is going to have to be a squeeky-clean election to prove to me any integrity in the system, and right now all I trust is paper ballots that are counted by people from both parties.

Re:further clarification

[Quantam]

There is going to have to be a squeeky-clean election to prove to me any integrity in the system, and right now all I trust is paper ballots that are counted by people from both parties.

Has to be a squeeky-clean election? Dude, I suggest you stop following politics, or you're going to be mad as hell for the rest of your life.

Or did you just mean that it has to be a squeeky-clean election when the Republicans win? In that case, it's only a matter of time till they get the boot.

Re:This points to problems with fragmented electio

[servognome]

I think the real solution to this mess is to nationalize the voting system. In the US every state and even every county has its own voting system, with different machines, voting dates, ballot fonts, software, etc.

No, nationalizing the voting system will only make things worse. If I don't feel my vote is being counted, it's easier for me to hold local officals accountable, than national ones.

Make sure to ignore actual voting irregularities

[Trailer Trash]

Such as this

Conspiracy or just OLD?

[fury88]

I live in Florida. I have yet to use these screens (my voting system are coloring in bubbles like I was in high school). I was here for the CHAD incident. I am not entirely convinced things are fair during the elections but it's quite possible that the issues are mostly with the older retirees down here and they are just freaked out because they don't know what the hell is going on with these machines. Technically uneducated people are naturally going to have issues when something new is introduced like Touch Screen voting, even if it does sound "fool proof"

Yeah, I did.

[Kadin2048]

I'll work with self-interest; at least self-interest is rational and predictable. Laziness coupled with stupidity is not.

I'd take self-interested amorality any day of the week, over arational stupidity. The self-interested person is easy to predict and work with; the idiot is just dangerous.

Re:Yeah, I did.

[khallow]

I'll work with self-interest; at least self-interest is rational and predictable.

Not it's not. I see how the rest of your misunderstanding follows.

Re:If they are smart enough to hack voting machine

[HoboMaster]

I'm Libertarian (see: likes taxes less than Republicans, though understands the fact that expenses have to be decreased accordingly), and I frequently give money to charities and the homeless. I would be willing to bet that republicans and deocrats give about equal amounts of money, on average, to charities. I know my republican family gives a very high percentage of their income to charities. It's not about not wanting to share. It's about me not wanting the government to decide where my money goes, largely because the government is very bad at that. I understand that some taxes are necessary to sustain services that no one other than the government can perform. That's all good and well. But if I want to give money to the poor, I'd much rather do it through an avenue that isn't run by incompetents who have a history of being incredibly wasteful, thanks.

Isn't it crazy when things don't fit into your convenient black and white views? Maybe that's a sign.

Not so...

[Mariner28]

A computer science professor from Maryland has researched the issue and has not found a single instance where a Democratic vote was recorded when a Republican was selected on screen. Random chance would say the error would swing both ways...

Re:Not so...

[ScentCone]

A computer science professor from Maryland has researched the issue and has not found a single instance where a Democratic vote was recorded when a Republican was selected on screen. Random chance would say the error would swing both ways...

A computer science professor studied - as a statistical sample - two anecdotes that were reported by newspaper in Florida, YESTERDAY?

Re:Re:Not so...

[Mariner28]

No. He's been studying reports of the 2004 elections, and the primaries from earlier this year. From various states. NOT two reported incidents in Florida from yesterday...

Nice try, though!

OT - heard a funny comment this morning on the radio. I'm sure Leno or Letterman or other late night TV hosts will pick this one up:
We have a man who's not the president botching a joke about the war in Iraq. We have a man who is president who is botching the war in Iraq. And the media is concentrating on the botched joke?

Re:Re:Not so...

[ScentCone]

And the media is concentrating on the botched joke?

No, the media's concentrating on the guy who swears he'd never besmirch military people saying, "get yourself educated so you won't get stuck in Iraq." This is same guy who, despite loving every person who ever wore a uniform (heh!) is famous for his "reminiscent of Ghengis Kahn" speech to a congressional committe. Over completely hearsay anecdotes. Oh well. It doesn't really matter. Even if he didn't mean what he said, his own party knows that it sure sounds like he meant what he said, and are begging him to STFU, avoid any more campaign support stops, etc. There's a little more to it than "the media" concentrating on just how to parse his BS comment. Better to ask how his own idealogical comrades are parsing it - and you can just tell by the un-inviting to public events exactly what they think. He'd really help more by just fading away for the next several days, that's for sure.

Re:Re:Not so...

[Moofie]

He wasn't besmirching military people. He was besmirching the President, who has sole responsibility for getting us stuck in Iraq.

*draws visual aid*

Re:Re:Not so...

[ScentCone]

He wasn't besmirching military people. He was besmirching the President, who has sole responsibility for getting us stuck in Iraq.

Leaving aside his actual intent, or his famously tone-deaf sense of what will, or will not appeal to the audience he's trying to address... he has to know that he made a major gaffe. He should have known it the moment it came out of his supercilious mouth. If he was a politician worthy of his party's trust as a presidential candidate, he'd have immediately bent over backwards to point out his ommission of the word that (two days later!) decides he should have included, thus completely altering the thrust of his comment - towards his opponent, and away from hundreds of thousands of professional military people. His misunderstanding of how he plays to crowds - friendly, or not so - is pretty amazing. Or not so, considering how he comes by his cash and social circles.

Re:Re:Not so...

[Moofie]

The man is clearly not an astute politician. Frankly, I think he's kind of a tool.

I would rather have that tool in charge than the current pack of deceitful chickenhawks.

I'd really REALLY rather we get a presidential candidate with a spine and some integrity, but considering the state of the two-party system, I'm not holding my breath.

Sounds like biased, irresponsible reporting

[firegate]

Errors can be common on voting machines - they are, in fact, machines and therefore are prone to malfunction. It's rather irresponsible of the Miami Herald to only report on errors that favored Republicans over Democrats when the rate of failure for the opposite circumstance is likely the same.

Re:Sounds like biased, irresponsible reporting

[The Rizz]

the rate of failure for the opposite circumstance is likely the same

Actually, the rate is not the same. Not even close. This is the problem.

Voting irregularities in the last several elections have favored republicans in almost every single instance.

Re:User Error

[zero1101]

"making voting idiot proof" shouldn't mean making it easier for idiots to vote.

You are incorrect. The right to vote in the U.S. is not based on merit. The administrators of the elections do have the responsibility to make voting accessible for everyone, even those who *you* don't consider qualified.

Most Floridians...

[haggie]

...find it challenging to make an "X" on the signature line of the purchase contract for their IROC Camaros (with T top!). I wouldn't trust them to use a computer touchscreen.

This is great news.

[doom]

This is great news. Seriously. I think it's really encouraging that one of the scams in use is so goddamn clumsy that people can actually see it in action. I figured the exploits would have gotten more slick by now, but maybe they haven't progressed in the state-of-the-art since 2004.

Well okay, so maybe it's not "great" exactly...

Re:This is great news.

[argStyopa]

So if I understand correctly, you're first presupposing a brilliant conspiracy to defraud tens if not hundreds of millions of voters in order to steal an election. A conspiracy that would require the complaisance of at LEAST hundreds or thousands of people, none of whom have slipped up even ONCE. Then you're presupposing that the masterminds behind this giant conspiracy are so flabbergastingly stupid that they'd implement their master plan so catastrophically badly that a 3 year old could see it? Do I have that right?

Alternately, it could be just stupidity, or crappy machines, or any number of BENIGN explanations and not an evil plan at all. But then I guess that tinfoil hat would look pretty damn stupid, wouldn't it?

Re:This is great news.

[Unit3]

No, we're talking about a large conspiracy, not a brilliant one; this is the Republicans, after all. Intelligence is not their strong point.

However, just because it's stupid, doesn't mean it's not happening. See: war in Iraq.

Re:This is great news.

[doom]

(arg!)Styopa wrote:

So if I understand correctly,

Problem number one.

you're first presupposing a brilliant conspiracy to defraud tens if not hundreds of millions of voters

I think there's evidence of a functional conspiracy, the main smoking gun being the patterns in exit-poll discrepancies in the 2004 election, though the widespread reports of more conventional irregularities in Ohio are good too.

Like I said, functional. I don't know if this would count as "brilliant". And I wouldn't "presuppose" this if I didn't think there was evidence for it.

in order to steal an election. A conspiracy that would require the complaisance of at LEAST hundreds or thousands of people,

The difficulty with the electronic voting machines in use is that the size of the conspiracy you need to do the job is much smaller. They allow wholesale fraud.

none of whom have slipped up even ONCE. Then you're presupposing that the masterminds behind this giant conspiracy are so flabbergastingly stupid that they'd implement their master plan so catastrophically badly that a 3 year old could see it?

Hm, well which do you think, am I claiming that they've never slipped up, or am I claiming that they have slipped up?

The transparency of this particular exploit is indeed pretty peculiar: that's what I'm commenting on. If the bad guys have to work like this, then they're definitely not invincible.

If you want a wild-ass guess: maybe the programmer's were being incompetent on purpose, because they wanted to sabotage the effort?

Alternately, it could be just stupidity, or crappy machines, or any number of BENIGN explanations and not an evil plan at all.

Well, it could be an IslamoMartian conspiracy to make the Republicans look bad.

But then I guess that tinfoil hat would look pretty damn stupid, wouldn't it?

Note: your "tinfoil" is past it's expiration date. Please upgrade your rhetoric dispenser.

name a dollar amount

[zogger]

Just a wild guess, but exactly what is total control of the US federal government, and some states governments worth? What is control of the executive branch or either house worth? In terms of access to cash, discretionary order giving power, etc, command of vast numbers of heavily armed folks who will do your bidding without much question,etc, etc I would say it is worth trillions of dollars and power simply unparalleled in history.

I call this evoting situation the largest incentive and easiest to get away with opportunity ever for a potential crime in the history of the planet, and when you combine the reality that any large scale investigations would have to be run by the same people who might have done the crime......and we have on going overlapping smoke signals that are showing that crimes sure might have been committed.. I call shenanigans then. Too many coincidences, too much evidence that this is way beyond accidental or slopping coding or just random chance due to normal business practices.

I like occams beard remover, it looks like a crime, the motive is huge, the opportunity is there, and the potential perps have a verified track record now of chronic serial lying over very important issues involving billions of dollars and actual huge numbers of human beings getting wasted.

This is not a "oops! little glitch" level situation any more.

If this was just joe schmo doing some little petty crime, with this amount of outstanding evidence, his butt would have been in jail a long time ago.

Why Would One Not Vote for Crist?

[RAMMS EIN]

``One voter needed assistance from an election official, and even then, needed three tries to convince the machine that he wanted to vote for Democrat Jim Davis in the gubernatorial race, not his Republican opponent Charlie Crist.''

Only terrorists vote against Christ, anyway.

Re:Why Would One Not Vote for Crist?

[RPGonAS400]

I wouldn't vote for Christ be cause he wouldn't be running. His reign is a kingdom and not an elected office. The beast gets it's power from the majority, the number of man, 666.

Re:Why Would One Not Vote for Crist?

[CiXeL]

i know it was a joke but i live in miami-dade and despite him being attorney general - few laws get enforced here and there is rampant corruption and this dude wants to be governor? hell no!

Re:User Error

[Hijacked Public]

You do realize that the word 'clever' appears twice in the original sentence, right? I mean, the same words that appeared on my screen appeared on yours, available for you to read?

Maybe not, so I'll spell it out with my suggestions:
If you're not white enough to figure out how to cast your ballot, you're not white enough to be deciding who should run the country.

So there it is. Maybe you did read it that way before you posted though, and you just can't quite get your brain around my meaning. Or maybe you are way out there on the literalness interpretation scale and you don't have any comprehension of sarcasm, or subtlety, or wit or irony or art or innuendo or context unless false HTML tags are used to guide you.

But I'm here to help you out on this one. Step back and take a deep breath and put all thoughts of maligning my username and touchscreens and disestablishmentarianism out of your head.

Here we go.

The contextual point of the above corrected sentence is that many people seem to want to draw arbitrary distinctions about who should be allowed to vote and who shouldn't. There was a time when conventional wisdom in the USA held the idea that women did not possess the qualities necessary to exercise the right to vote. There was also a time when people who were not white could not vote. Today we have people, like the original poster, who will make the case that if you cannot understand a voting machine or ballot interface that the accusation maker has more than likely never seen, you should not be allowed to vote. This is where the post-correction portion of my post comes into play, by reinforcing the sarcasm with "see how it reads." The idea being that by reading the sentence with corrections the original poster might realize the error of "randomly drawing lines along the cleverness scale", it now having been compared with the largely agreed upon banished of the practice of drawing similar lines along boundaries of race.

I hope you have been following along, and while we haven't really covered that much information I'm sure paying attention is an arduous task for you.

Florida isn't the only one

[gmr2048]

Voting in some VA districts is screwy too...

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_13 58.shtml

"What is being called a "glitch" by Hart InterCivic spokespersons, three cities in Virginia -- Alexandria (poster's note: population 7,078,515 in 2000), Falls Church (pop. 10,377 in 2000) and Charlottesville (pop. 45,049 in 2000)-- will not properly display (Democrat) Jim Webb's name on the November ballot summary screen. Voters will only see 'James H. "Jim"' on the ballot, instead of 'James H. "Jim" Webb'.

To make matters worse, the candidates will have "their party affiliations . . . cut off" even after navigating through the summary screen nearly blind. To put some perspective and clarity to this, in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, Virginia, voters will not be able to recognize Jim Webb by his full name OR by his party's affiliation!"

Re:Florida isn't the only one

[thorkyl]

thats the way to do it.

vote by name NOT party

--
we dont need any yellow dog democrats, and we dont need any dead gop's elected

Obligatory joke

[Tarmas]

In Soviet Russia Republicans vote YOU.

Re:This points to problems with fragmented electio

[d3ac0n]

Agreed.

Far too many things in our Country are nationalized already. While it is nice to have a single standard for many things (Web standards, document standards, etc.) The importance of a single standard diminishes when placed in the political arena. It is far more important to be able to readily hold politicians accountable for irregularities. The last thing we need is another faceless beurocracy pulling strings from behind the scenes.

farewell, anonymous

[doom]

Our old friend Anonymous Coward wrote:

If you want to believe that some massive right-wing conspiracy

Allow me to trot out a Paul Kruman quote (from the yet-another article "The Smoke Machine", collected in The Great Unraveling): "In a way, it's a shame that so much of David Brock's Blinded by the Right: The conscience of an ex-conservative is about the private lives of our self-appointed moral guardians. Those tales will sell books, but they may obscure the important message: That the 'vast right-wing conspiracy' is not an overheated metaphor but a straightforward reality, and that it works a lot like a special-interest lobby."

has all voting machines wired to somehow vote republican, be my guest,

No, no, not all. Just the DRE (direct recording electronic) machines pushed into use over the objections of anyone who understands them (e.g. some absurd percentage of the ACM... 90%?).

but even the most tinfoiled crazies must know how ridiculous that sounds.

You know, that "tinfoil" line has really jumped the shark. Almost as badly as the "jumped the shark" line.

Is there voter fraud with voting machines? Yes. Was there more voter fraud back in the days of paper ballots hand delivered by men on horses (and hand counted by the people who weren't smart/skilled enough to have real jobs)? Of course.

One more time: the trouble with the electronic voting machines in use is that they allow wholesale fraud. Back in the good old days fraud was a much more labor-intensive business.

If I wanted to read biased FUD all day long, I would watch network news, or the latest Michael Moore movie. Get real.

Don't forget HBO!
Hacking Democracy

take your camera!

[jt418-93]

takes your digital / cell / whatever cameras with you when you vote. take pix of the machines flipping votes and post them. it will be hard to ignore millions of pix of screwed up votes. but with no exit polling, they are trying.

don't let this be another screwed up election!

The Signs have been allowed

[bloodstar]

Just as a FYI, On Oct 28th, Writing for a three-judge panel, District Judge James Wolf said Florida law allows poll workers to display informational notices, so long as they are impartial and do not favor a specific candidate. The unanimous ruling reversed an Oct. 18 decision barring the signs. However the court ruled that *All* Candidates must be listed on the signs to prevent any appearance of endorsement for a single candidate. The Democrat party said the ruling was reasonable and have not appealed. (Information from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Cost benefit analysis

[bremstrong]

The question really is, do we want to be able to audit a voting total, or would we rather hope nothing went wrong with the electronic voting machines?

Cost benefit analysis:

Money saved with unauditable system, for each voter:

sheet of paper: $0.005
portion of printer to print vote receipt: $50 / 200 voters, $0.25

Unauditable voting systems to save $0.13 per voter?

Sounds like a bad bargain. I'd be willing to have a $0.13 tax increase to be more sure everyone's vote was properly tallied.

What's the point of all this political debate if in the end it come down to which party has more clever voting machine hackers?

Re:Nice Try

[mfrank]

If one party is consistently listed above the other, and the touchscreen calibration is off, this could easily happen. The "fix" they're talking about the poll workers doing is probably a touchscreen calibration.

Re:User Error

[edward2020]

Perhaps you are the one that does not understand sarcasm.

Its a common problem

[thorkyl]

for people in Florida, hell they cant poke a hole in a piece of paper with a tool that is designed to poke that hole. what makes you think they can put their finger on the right spot on a touch screen.

--
Stupid people should not breed
Ignorant people should not vote

Re:Its a common problem

[doom]

thorkyl (739500) wrote:

for people in Florida, hell they cant poke a hole in a piece of paper with a tool that is designed to poke that hole. what makes you think they can put their finger on the right spot on a touch screen.

You really need to read something besides Ann Coulter once in awhile... This is from the Freeman and Bliefuss book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?:

The problem wasn't the voter. Don A. Dillman, who has researched the design of paper questionnaires, made the following observations the day after the election:

I've never seen one set up like this. It's very confusing the way they have put things on the right side together with things on the left side... If you passed over the first candidate to go for the second candidate, it's logical that you'd punch the second hole.

The butterfly ballot cost Al Gore more than 15,000 net votes. It cost him more than 2,000 votes attributed to Buchanan, whose punch hole was located between that of Bush and Gore, and to socialist candidate David McReynolds, whose punch hole was located to the right of and below Lieberman's name.

Re:Its a common problem

[thorkyl]

So what your telling me, is that you know who a person wanted to vote for by the location of the hole in the paper?

B.S., no one knows who anybody votes for

All I know is when I vote I am smart enough to check my ballot before I remove it from the machine, and if I have punched the wrong spot I ask for a void and a new ballot, then start over.

Florida is just an example...

[Duggeek]

I'm sure we all remember the Diebold exposé back in September?

[sarcasm]So nice to see that Florida is so on-top of things.[/sarcasm]

Seems like all they do is say, "that's just the way it is." All the while, Jebbie is racking-up the GOP vote in a pathetic attempt to regain his brother's favor after debacles in both 2000 and 2004.

Let's take back our right to a fair election!

They can only take it away if we let them.

Re:Drop the FUD: read the ACTUAL Miami Herald Arti

[truthsearch]

I see no mention of a paper trail. Yet they claim there are no problems counting yet. Well they can't possibly know this if there isn't paper verified by each voter.

I don't care at all if a screen displays the name of the person I voted for. I want to see it printed on a piece of paper and then drop it into a lock box. Without any way to verify electronic votes it's a failure.

Now how did I miss that?

[Mariner28]

Now how did I miss that? Simjian's was unsuccessful, but I'll admit it was first!

WHAT?

[SilverJets]

From TFA

Apparently, this happens all the time. According to the Herald, "Broward County Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot - essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside.

I'm sorry, but WHAT? How exactly does the display "slip of out sync" with the electronics inside?

And why does the American public seem to accept this and not care that yet another election is being stolen?

Hello? Where's the outrage that your all-powerful system of freedom and democracy is being abused?

I knew them very-bulls was wrong

[Beltway Prophet]

Dagnabbit! The votes was supposed to get changed AFTER the confirmation thingy. Shifty foreign programmers just had to go and screw this up, didn't they? Hey Hayden! What do we have that can link 9-11 to Outsourceistan? We'll show THEM how to be democratistic!

Even ONCE IS NOT FUD.

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

These machines suck. They need to be lampooned, and paraded as the farce they are.

Unless your such a geek that you think touch screens make voting cool. then,

may the Farce be With You!

Re:Even ONCE IS NOT FUD.

[dan828]

OK fine. But crappy technology is hardly a "shenanigan", is it? Phrasing it that way, one would think that someone was deliberately causing this, as opposed to crappy touchscreens being the cause. Therefore, the summary and TFA, in that paragon of journalism "The Register", is FUD.

Re:Even ONCE IS NOT FUD.

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

well the problem is that crappy technology is a fact not a conjecture; the impetueus to accept hardware that is provably flawed in various scenarios must be considered as having a wide range of possible actor, from a sloppy election technician all the way up... and up... and up..

Someone said elsewhere in the thread that we should not abscribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. HOWEVER, controlled ignorance and feigning of stupidity is often the keystone of a successful tech company - preying on the technological insecurities of the customer in the form of the everlasting 'sorry we just can't do that"....

when of course they can [make good systems]

(I am a Consultant.)

Re:Even ONCE IS NOT FUD.

[soft_guy]

Phrasing it that way, one would think that someone was deliberately causing this

The way you tell it, it is like a natural disaster like an earthquake that had no human cause and no one could have predicted. In the real world, experts from all over the country warned about the problems of these type of voting machines. Actual people (mostly republicans) insisted on buying these machines from a company that pledged that if you buy them, then republicans will be elected. Then the machines are bought and put into service and they fail in such a way as to favor republicans. And to anyone who complains there is always some republican shill like you who will say "It isn't like anyone could have predicted this would happen! It is a fact of nature that computers are teh suck, so you should expect glitches!!"

No, everyone predicted this would happen. It was caused by people. Deliberately. The county executive did not fall down a flight of stairs and a pen fell of his pocket and landed on a blank check in such a way as to write a check to DieBold to buy these crappy machines.

atm touch screens

[falconwolf]

We are talking about calibrating touch screens. I have never used or even seen an ATM machine that had a touch screen. Next obvious question is: why do voting machines have touch screens?

I have used atm touch screens a few tymes and never had trouble using them.

Falcon

I swear to God...

[Almighty Tallest]

I'm going to pistol whip the next person who says 'shenanigans'.

Re:I swear to God...

[doom]

Almighty Tallest wrote:

I'm going to pistol whip the next person who says 'shenanigans'.

Thank you!

I quite reading the Economist when they referred to the CIA's complicity in kidnapping and torture "CIA shenanigans".

Touch pad distance to screen

[Nahor]

I think that the problem with the signature screens is that the sensitive part is far from the display itself. So depending on where your head is when you look at it, you get a pronounced parallax effect. On most "regular" touchscreens, the distance is small so you don't get that effect in such a noticeable way.

For the signature screens, I would not be surprised that the increased distance is on purpose. Seeing how some screens are scratched, some people are real brutes with the stylus so the developers increased the distance to avoid breaking/scratching the display itself.

Re:Voter fraud is epidemic

[doom]

Voter fraud is epidemic Anonymous Coward wrote:

Slashdot alone has run numerous stories that make it clear that U.S. elections are regularly stolen. We will never have a real presidental election again. Because of human nature, people are oblivous to this and will deny the problem until it is too late.

Now now, I sympathize, but don't fly off the handle. It is at least possible that while the Republicans have a heavy finger on the scale, they may not be able to always tip the balance completely. You want to watch out for that kind of defeatism: a heavy turnout is the first defense against attempted fraud, so don't go around telling people voting is useless.

Here's a fantasy for you: while the Republicans will barely maintain control of the house (due to a few surprisingly strong wins in races that had looked close, possibly, oh, Tennessee and Virginia), the House will go overwhelmingly Democratic. Emboldened by this victory, the Democrats may miraculously develop some spine and begin pushing for authentic election reform, like say The Paper Ballot Act of 2006. The Republicans, seeing that the Democrats have some serious momentum, choose not to block this effort -- which after all is a push for fair elections, not for any particular Democrat advantage.

Like I say, a fantasy. You got anything better?

I don't have time to put up all the stories about election fraud now, but I'll give you my favorite: Gore's negative vote tally in one county. What are your favorite voter fraud stories?

Well now, that's a tough one. I think I kind of like Chuck Harris, getting himself elected to the Senate with votes counted by machines from the company he owns, ES&S: If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines

Re:Republinazi election rigging procedure

[kanani]

".... Poor people don't watch as much TV or drive as much. This'll weed them out." poor people don't watch as much TV? PLEASE who do you think watches dr phil and jerry springer

Re:Slashdot has official made suck zone

[doom]

wrote:

It's sad to see another site go to major suckage over this childish junk.

Oh yes, election integrity is so silly. Real nerds are apolitical. Where's my video game reviews?

I guess another case of Internet entropy slowly reducing the volume of intelligence a site to nothing.

Entropy? I thought it was the hired Republican sock-puppets.

What am I missing?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

1. The elections haven't taken place yet. So how could this story be correct?
2. A search of the Miami Herald site -- the cited source -- does not turn up a similar story.

Am I missing something here?

Re:What am I missing?

[Knara]

Many locales allow people to vote earlier than election day.

exit polls

[falconwolf]

The as of yet unexplained discrepancies between exit polling and results in 2004 (BTW, the given explanation that exit polls are always wrong was addressed as being incorrect by a researcher for the Pew Charitable Trusts on NPR last week).

Wiki has a pretty good article on exit polls.

Falcon

Technology in elections

[williambbertram]

This article has no merit unless the author can either A) Prove that the devices have been tampered with or B) Link all poorly designed computer technology to political conspiracy.

not in this case

[misanthrope101]

Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to idiocy, carelessness, ignorance, stupidity, incompetence, or laziness; particularly in combination with each other.

Normally I would agree with you. But raw stupidity/incompetence would distribute the errors on both sides of the political spectrum. Incompetence would generate random errors and vote miscounts.

But if the errors disproportionately benefit one political party, then that alone is evidence of malfeasance. If all the "random" numbers benefit my candidate, then the numbers aren't random.

Re:not in this case

[kbielefe]

But raw stupidity/incompetence would distribute the errors on both sides of the political spectrum. Incompetence would generate random errors and vote miscounts.

A design defect due to incompetence can still produce an error that is consistently in the same direction. Ballots are usually consistently sorted by party, and a drift in calibration in one direction is entirely plausible. A component near one end of the screen may be more subject to heat or electromagnetic interference, or maybe problems could be caused by one end of the screen simply getting touched more and therefore getting dirty faster, like the end where the next button is. Problems like that are difficult to foresee before hardware gets in the field, especially if there is cost or time pressure.

Re:Conspiracy Theories Are Getting Tiresome

[dangitman]

If you are tired of conspiracy theories, then shouldn't you support transparency in government and the electoral process - so people actually know what the hell is going on? With all this hush-hush stuff and lack of oversight, it allows conspiracy theories to flourish. And that is a good thing, because a lack of oversight and accountability is often how conspiracies are carried out.

I find it amazing how many people are quick to say "who cares" when it comes to important things like the electoral process. If there was nobody up to malicious activity, then why are so many politicians and companies so opposed to a transaparent public process?

Re:And this is the Republicans' fault how?

[dangitman]

So tell me, where is the definitive evidence that touch-screen mis-alignment was the problem? Has this been scientifically tested?

Re:Make sure to ignore actual voting irregularitie

[sholden]

One of these things involve technology/computers and one does not.

Guess which would probably make it on slashdot.

Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[spun]

Way to misrepresent the UCLA/Stanford study. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it showed that reporters are more liberal than the average reader, but that editors and owners (you know, the guys who decide what goes in the media?) are decidedly more conservative than their readers. Actual media coverage of events shows a marked conservative bias because the people who control the media are rich and therefore far more likely to be conservative.

You complain about bias, but show an amazing amount of it yourself. You are one of those children you mention, in a single post both throwing spitwads (Dead people vote for Democrats!!11one!1) and tattling to the teachers (Reid's Real Estate!1one!1! Slashed GOP Tires!!eleventyone!!)

Re:Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is asinine.

1. The mainstream news media carries a definitive liberal bias. It always surprises me how strongly things are spun to favor Democrats. Do you know who Bernard Goldberg is (honestly, don't just Google him)?

Have you ever heard reports of or read translations of the tapes of Saddam Hussein discussing moving weapons into Syria prior to the US invasion of Iraq? Not that they are terribly consequential for anything other than PR, but it is amazing at how little exposure they received while "Bush lies, they die" continues to echo.

2. Some of the richest people in this country are liberal. Think Bill Gates, Geroge Soros, Warren Buffett, etc. Not to mention that big bad Rupert Murdoch endorsed Hillary Clinton for her Senate reelection bid.

3. His point was that Democrats seem to get past scandals much more cleanly than Republicans do. Think of the Foley-Studds comparison. No one told Tip O'Neill to resign.

4. He is making a comment on Slashdot, not making a news report on a national medium. Before immediately calling someone names for voicing opposition to the Democratic party, you might want to consider the validity of what he said.

Re:Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Way to misrepresent the UCLA/Stanford study. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it showed that reporters are more liberal than the average reader, but that editors and owners (you know, the guys who decide what goes in the media?) are decidedly more conservative than their readers.

The study watched "what goes in the media"--e.g., actual reporting--to determine its conclusions.

You complain about bias, but show an amazing amount of it yourself.

What, because I point out how political extremists on both sides have severely fucked American politics?

Re:Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[spun]

Got a link to that study? I'd like to see their methodology, because from my experience and from other studies I've read, the media has a severe conservative bias. You may consider yourself unbiased, but if you go by the same criteria you've just mentioned, your post has a severe conservative bias because you focus solely on liberal scandals. Perhaps your perception of bias comes from the fact that conservatives currently have more power and therefore more opportunity to lie, cheat, and steal. Because they do it more, they get caught more and the media reports it more.

That being said, I agree with your general thesis: extremists on both sides have severely fucked American politics. I just think that you go about proving your point in a very biased way. A less biased way would be to make as many references to conservative scandals as to liberal scandals.

Re:Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[Mr2001]

The mainstream news media carries a definitive liberal bias. It always surprises me how strongly things are spun to favor Democrats.

I always get jealous when I see claims like this, because you clearly have access to news media that I don't. Why is it that everyone with cable has to get Fox News, but only paranoid conservatives get these pro-liberal channels they're always talking about?

Re:Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[whoop]

http://www.cmpa.com/documents/06.10.31.Bad.news.pd f

From the Center for Media and Public Affairs. Right there on the first page, 77% of Democrat coverage (ABC, NBC, CBS) is favorable, and 12% of Republican coverage is favorable to them. Heck, some news I've seen still mentions Tom Delay (Republicans = corrupt), but I never heard what happened to Rep William Jefferson (D-Louisiana) and his $90k in the freezer. Here in Illinois, two big fund raisers for the governor (a democrat) are in trouble for illegalities with their raising. Yet, I don't consider every democrat in the country corrupt because a few are.

What I don't recall from the 1994 takeover of Congress, was this HUGE push for weeks/months beforehand like they have now, saying how it's a done-deal, Democrats have won, Nancy Pilosi is Speaker, Bush will be impeached immediately, etc.

Re:Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[spun]

That makes sense. The study you link to is only for this year. The Republicans have quite frankly had a very bad year. Media is a business, and like businesses everywhere it gives its customers what they want. With Bush's approval ratings as low as they are, it's pretty obvious that people are fed up with his presidency. Think back to the years long media circus that surrounded Clinton. Think back to how little coverage Bush's screw ups got back when his approval ratings were high. This year's election coverage may have gone to the Democrats, but most go to the Republicans.

Re:Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[Mr2001]

The funny thing was that they never managed to show video of him saying it or quoted exactly what he said. They only talked about the GOP capitalizing on it and played clips of various Republicans criticizing him. Curiously enough there was no mention of the negative response from Democrats over the remark.

I haven't really been watching the coverage of that non-story.. have any of the networks mentioned that he'd told the same joke at several previous appearances, and there was no outrage until he skipped over the word "us" this one time?

Re:Is OCG a Childish spitwad throwing tattle tale?

[OptimusPaul]

It's interesting but I don't accept it. By what criteria do they determine what is favorable or unfavrable? How was the data obtained? Did it survey actual people? I'm not saying that it's wrong, it just doesn't seem like a reliable metric. I also think that people tend to think that the media is either biased towards the opposition or it's reasonably unbiased, and being that the nation is fairly polarized right now people are tending to believe that the media is against them. An informal survey of people at my work has proven this to be accurate. Many people thought the media was against their ideaologies, I even heard a few people thinking the same news outlet was biased in both directions based on thier views. Nearly a third of the people I talked to didn't have an opinion and didn't really care. It seems that Apathy runs high in the 20-30 year olds in my work.

I wonder..

[kuriharu]

...will they still make these claims if Democrats WIN the elections?

It always seems if Republicans win then there's voter fraud, but if Democrats win it's a fair election. I guess if you can't win on ideads or smear tactics, blame the voting process. Honestly, what else is left?

What's worse is that this actually makes the Demo's chances worse for winning. If a lot of Democrats think the election is going to be stolen, it will keep them at home.

Hey, whatever works.

Touch Screens

[Var1abl3]

I work on large printers all the time (IBM 3900's and 4000's), many of them have touch screens. Often when you try to press a button on the screen the pointer will not land under your finger and it may even click the button above or below the selection (or off to one side even) that I am trying to make. It sounds to me that this is a similar problem the Vote Machines are having. When I am repairing the printers I have to run a calibration to fix this problem. It is quite easy... the screen shows 2 boxes (upper left and lower right corner of the screen) you have to touch the screen in each box for 5 seconds to recalibrate the screen video to the "touch" part of the screen. I think this is the same thing that the touch screens are doing in FL. I would not blame the Bush admin first... (if I hacked a vote machine I would show the voter that they voted for who they thought they did but update the database with the person I wanted to win some % of the time and not show them that they voted for the wrong person) So before everyone goes and puts their foil hats on and hide from the black helicopters why don't you use that stuff that holds your ears apart and think about it logically first... or you can freak out call the ACLU, the press and claim "They stole Florida again!!!!"

Modded up by the Republican Party

[dtjohnson]

Wish the touchscreen on my local ATM machine would 'go out of calibration' and spit out a few extra 20s.

Re:Voter fraud is epidemic

[doom]

Sorry, I meant to say that the Republicans will barely maintain control of the Senate, with the Democrats taking the House.

And just for the sake of saying something useful, keep an eye on electoral-vote for the current state of the polls.

OH BOY ! Please !

[unity100]

you are talking like there is no fishy goings-on around.

Like the 2000 election was not fishy, leave aside that, like in the 2004 election there werent abundant haywire-going election machines with NO paper trails that were manufactured by the surprisingly republican supporter corporations (and tightly knit with the 'boys' in fact) widely used and even after that were tried to be made a standard all over u.s., and only havent been made so because so many suspicious vulnerabilities have popped up in their design.

Man. you fail to see one single point that have always been true way back in world history :

In politics there are no intended mistakes. If something a political entity produces or does (a plan, a deal, a law) is TOO fishy, then it is meant to be fishy. And in a situation like this election machine vulnerabilities, only the overly stupid people do phletora of mistakes in just only one topic - but overly stupid people cant get elected and hold office for that long in the first place. so it is certain that it was planned to be so, but the abundant talks that are being made in talk shows, media, expert circles about the vulnerabilities of voting machines were not.

A company can have a bad or flawed design without malicious intent.

No company squeezes that much amount of flaws into one single box without intent. And this is no local area small business type machine, it is a nationally serving machine, and in a very delicate matter too - deadly for a company's, yet leave aside that, programmers' reputation. however, curiously, there are innumerable flaws in ELECTION machines that are produced in u.s.

if there isnt something fishy here, i am a bunch of bananas on a banana tree.

I've used them

[CrazedWalrus]

There aren't many around, probably due to issues just like this. I do know that Bank of America uses them in some locations in New Jersey.

A personal experience: I was using a Fleet ATM with a touch screen, and wanted to withdraw $40 via "Fast Cash" (press the amount, no confirmation). By simply passing my hand too close to the $100 at least two inches above the screen, the machine registered the $100 selection and spit that amount out. I hadn't even touched the screen.

Touch screens are error prone, though they've gotten a lot better. Why in the hell they're using them for national elections, I'll never know, but due to my own experience with them, I'm not calling conspiracy just yet.

Reason for correction

[SuperKendall]

Indeed, the votes which have been corrected to vote Republican are just making up for reality's well known liberal bias.

I didn't know you could spell Hugo Chavez as "reality"...

In other words, the corrections are to offset the pre-programmed pro-liberal "glitches" from Smartmatic.

Re:Reason for correction

[???]

OMFG. Are you seriously trying to support your argument with a link to the eminently trustworthy, unbiased and fair media outlet called NewsMax?

FWIW, Bob and Todd Urosevich's companies, (Diebold Elections Systems and ES&S) account for over %80 of the elections equipment in the U.S. So, while Sequoia (the company owned by Smartmatic, which the Venezuelan government in turn owns a minority stake) is a player, they are not at the scale they've been made out to be in the last few months.

Either way, there's one way to make sure these machines are auditable and to provide the possibility of recovery from a rigged election. That's a voter-verified paper audit trail (and the procedures to actually routinely use the VVPAT to conduct an audit). Surprisingly enough, it was the evil Venezuelan company - Sequoia - that was one of the first to introduce machines with VVPAT.

Re:Reason for correction

[WilliamSChips]

Hugo Chavez doesn't need his voting machines to be bugged. He has a band of thugs killing his opponents. In addition, he is only 'liberal' in the sense that Republicans call anything to the left of Attila the Hun 'liberal'. The only good tihng I can say about him is that he's better than the dictator that the CIA wants in there.
Besides, Venezuela sold their shares in Smartmatic as soon as Chavez' partial ownership of the company was widely known. And this was quite a while ago.

Re:Reason for correction

[Mr2001]

Huh, I thought Smartmatic's pre-programmed pro-liberal "glitches" were just there to offset the pre-programmed pro-neocon "glitches" from Diebold.

Re:Reason for correction

[Captain Splendid]

I never thought I'd see someone post a Newsmax link here. This is Slashdot, not Fark, jackass.

When will you understand

[shrikel]

this is a TWO PARTY system.

Re:Make sure to ignore actual voting irregularitie

[Trailer Trash]

Close, but you screwed it up slightly:

"One of these things involve alleged wrongdoing by Republicans, and one does not.

Guess which would probably make it on slashdot."

There you go....

Sloppy research - follow the REAL money

[SuperKendall]

If you are going to play the "Follow the money" game, look first at this Wired article which states:

"Both Broward and Miami-Dade counties use machines made by Election Systems & Software, while Palm Beach county uses machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems. No Florida counties used touch-screen machines made by Diebold Election Systems, the company whose machines have received the most scrutiny over the last year."

Huh, no Diebold. But they do use Sequoia... now where have I heard that name before?

Oh yeah, they are owned by Smartmatic, a Venezuelan company under examination for rigging the Chavez election!

Do you think Chavez is out to help Bush? Is it possible he "likes the smell of sulfur in the morning", so to speak? Using good old Occam's Razor, I say that's pretty damn unlikely.

I miss the time when crackpot theories were based on bits of actual truth instead of being dead in the water out of the gate due to the most basic lack of research. You'd never make it in the anti-gravity field, my friend.

Doesn't sound like a miscalibration to me.

[quarmar]

"Another voter who went Democrat across the board kept finding Republicans listed in the summary screen."

Doesn't sound like the touch screen was at fault to me....

Sure

[SuperKendall]

Not quite in the US, but in Venezuela you had an election machine manufacturer so under question that "the European Union (EU) refused to play an observer's role".

As that story indicates that very company now owns Sequoia Voting Systems, which supplies some of the voting systems Florida uses.

So basically you had a past vote swung in a very liberal direction, the makers of said system now own some US voting computers. Makes you wonder if the miscalibration was miscalibrated, if you must look at crazy theories along those lines...

Re:Drop the FUD: read the ACTUAL Miami Herald Arti

[forgotten_my_nick]

> Only minor glitches reported in early voting

You know -16,000 votes for a candidate was also "only a minor glitch" as well.

I'm going to fix an election.

[Progoth]

I have total control of the voting machines, and I'm going to fix the election. I need some help though...I have a hard decision to make...

Should I a) let the voter choose whatever he or she wants, and then assign all the votes to my candidate? or b) randomly have the machine reassign input to choose my candidate, giving them a chance to verify and correct their vote?

I just don't know...this is such a tough decision...I must not be cut out for this election stealing business.

Re:I'm going to fix an election.

[__aaclcg7560]

Have all the votes be counted for "Mr. None-of-the-Above" and let the election officials sort it out.

Re:I'm going to fix an election.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

None of the above. Make the machines so undependable that they don't register any vote at all N% of the time unless they've received recent maintenance. Put the recently maintained machines in the precincts that vote your way. Put the rest into opposition territory. If anyone complains, let them spend a few years auditing the software and finding nothing wrong. With no audit trail, nobody can tell that their vote got lost. Statistical anomalies? The precincts will be reporting in their normal proportions since the failures will be random. The only way to catch it would be to check recorded vote counts against the number of people who signed in, in which case you just accuse your opponents of being too indecisive to cast a vote.

Re:I'm going to fix an election.

[Kuroji]

If you want to fix the election, just make sure the votes go where they belong - clearly they don't at present, anyways. (/sarcasm)

Re:I'm going to fix an election.

[greylion3]

b) randomly have the machine reassign input to choose my candidate, giving them a chance to verify and correct their vote?

It might only VISUALLY be giving them a chance to verify and correct their vote.

However, that approach could be defeated by giving each ballot a unique ID-number, and doing some individual checking later, by phone, email or some other method.

And do what?

[SuperKendall]

Then we can put the filthy bastards up against the wall.

And then what - impose UN sanctions on them?

Amen brother

[DeadCatX2]

My Nintendo DS Lite has a better touchscreen than that.

Maybe Nintendo should get into the voting machine biz.

Ironically idiotic

[SuperKendall]

What's really funny is you went to all the trouble to type that, when Florida doesn't even use Diebold voting systems!

Instead they use systems from a company now controlled from Venezuela. Wrap your head around that if you think votes are being stolen...

Re:Ironically idiotic

[gorehog]

Well, the song is about Diebold. Fits well into the rhythm. The rest still holds. If you steal too many elections (not you in particular, the general, ambiguous you) by too large a margin then, eventually, you will end up with an oppressed, under-represented, disgruntled populace. When that happens look to history for the rest of the story.

try acetate

[LunaticTippy]

A thin acetate sheet would be sturdy and no parallax. Plus, you can roll it up for storage or transport.

Burn down the Reichstag now and have done with it.

[GrahamCox]

I don't know why Bush and his cronies bother with all this subtle stuff. Why not just get it over with, burn down the Reichstag (Capitol) and declare unilaterally all other parties illegal? Don't worry, we'll come and save your asses once he annexes Mexico.

Re:User Error

[Jon Luckey]

I love this comment about the Supreme Court overturning Florida state law. What the Supreme Court said was the Florida Supreme court did not have the right to change the voting laws in the middle of an election.

Actually the Supreme Court said this:


          Upon due consideration of the difficulties identified to this
      point, it is obvious that the recount cannot be conducted in
      compliance with the requirements of equal protection and due process
      without substantial additional work. It would require not only the
      adoption (after opportunity for argument) of adequate statewide
      standards for determining what is a legal vote, and practicable
      procedures to implement them, but also orderly judicial review of any
      disputed matters that might arise.


Seems that the Supreme Court is saying the Florida Court was not only expected to make Florida election laws (case law really, not statutory law) in the middle of an election, but that their real error was not making ENOUGH new 'law'.

Re:I can't see the problem here

[blueskies]

I thought you were being taxed to pay for Defense spending and the interest on our debt? Aren't those in the top 3 too?

But that doesn't mean anything.

[raehl]

2) There is no documented evidence of votes for republicans going to democrats.

This is in Broward county. You can't find evidence of republican votes switching to democratic ones if everyone is voting democratic in the first place.

Re:But that doesn't mean anything.

[killjoe]

"This is in Broward county"

So? The election commission is a statewide office. Of course they would rig the machines in Broward, they are not going to rig them in a republican county are they?

"You can't find evidence of republican votes switching to democratic ones if everyone is voting democratic in the first place."

There must be a few people in broward who vote republican.

Re:But that doesn't mean anything.

[Alchemar]

"There must be a few people in broward who vote republican."

There are now!

Florida certified voting machine companies

[rilian4]

Took 5 seconds to google the appropriate page:
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/votemeth/sysvendor s.shtml

Looks like 3 companies:
Diebold Election Systems
Elections Systems and Software, Inc. &
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

But I thought...

[Oonushi]

that some of the reasoning for using electronic voting in the first place was to prevent all those problems people where having with punch cards.

I don't agree with that logic, but if that is the argument, doesn't this demonstrate that these machines are at least no better - if not worse off than paper ballots/punch cards?

I just don't get why some people still think that these machines are an improvement in any way.

Re:Drop the FUD: read the ACTUAL Miami Herald Arti

[swiftstream]

`Our ability to process voters accurately and at a faster rate really has improved.''

Interesting. Here in Utah, where we are using e-voting machines for the first time this election, there's a great deal of concern over them being _slower_ than the old machines--and since they are more expensive, many polling places only have half as many machines as they used to. I wonder why Florida is having the opposite experience?

Sideshow Bob Roberts

[Pope]

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F02.html

"Oh my God...the dead have risen and they're voting Republican!"

Randomness

[MartinisMatt]

If they are smart enough to hack the machine, why didn't they hack the summary page as well? In the end this "scheme" was foiled by the summary page review system. It sounds like this has more to do with who is listed first and the touch screen getting out of sync than whether there is an R or D after the candidate's name.

Because Genuine Tampering Is Inevitable...

[weston]

... it's best to be alert for it.

Have we become so cynical that we believe the absolute worst of everyone?

In politics? It's not hard. This has nothing to do with political philosophy, and everything to do with actions that look shady, both circumstantially and concretely. Perhaps you've heard about the recent campaign letter in Orange County discouraging immigrants? Perhaps you've heard about the groups threatening individuals with arrest if they show up at the pools, or telling that 'Democrats vote on Wednesday'? Blackwell's management of voter registration in Ohio 2004?

I'm not about to argue the Democrats have a clean history in this regard. Evidence of machines making it difficult to vote for Republicans is equally worthy of investigation. However, there's ample evidence there are people in both parties -- *Republicans Included* -- who are willing to cheat. The motive's there. The means and opportunity are documented. That makes it nearly inevitable, so when some voting trouble comes up that looks and quacks like a duck....

The Democrats offer no real solutions than to say they would do "better" than the Republicans

First of all, even *assuming* all the Democrats have to offer over the Republicans is that they're not the current crop of Republicans, that's still a virtue. Expressing disapproval is a real form of feedback. Turning over ineffective officials may not get you who you want immediately, but it's absolutely necessary if you want change, and it tells politicians who NOT to be.

Second of all, while the statement 'Democrats offer no real solutions' may be true of a given candidate, and while it's more largely true in terms of campaign tactics (which value rhetoric over substance), I'd say that phrase far more commonly means "I'm unfamiliar with the Democratic candidate's policy positions." I can't count the number of times that people said that about Kerry during 2004, but when I'd follow up with something like "So, you don't like Kerry's plan for shaping tax incentives to hire domestically?", 90% of them had no idea what I was talking about.

And the Democratic candidate for Senate I'm supporting this election (Pete Ashdown) has been genuinely expressive about many of his positions and views.

It's also true, of course, that not every Democrat is a good candidate, nor does every Republican need to be turned out. I simply find that phrases like "the Democrats are just as bad" or "the Democrats have no ideas" to be false.

Why can't we just focus on the problems with electronic voting rather than turning it into a political debate?

It's an excellent idea, but for whatever reason, talking ourselves blue on the technical merits of the issue seems to have done nothing to get the population up in arms and our elected officials to do anything.

I think in the end, the problem isn't that there's partisan accusations of cheating. It's that we seem to have no significant social equipment for investigating the issues without invoking partisan ire.

Re:User Error

[Qzukk]

So, what level are you comfortable setting "clever enough" at? Clever enough to be able to operate an improperly calibrated touchscreen that appears to select random people? Maybe we can have intelligence tests administered, or perhaps only people with PhDs can vote?

So far comments are "it was only one screen, big deal" but with things like "Yet another frustrated voter who complained of difficulties selecting a Democrat was told that the machine she was using had been troublesome.", why are we getting up to "yet another"? Why was the "troublesome" device not retired and replaced with a functioning one? If it was just a calibration issue, why was it not calibrated in the first place, or recalibrated if it really did just "slip" over the course of the voting (losing calibration in less than a day?!)? The Register asks why they're allowed to "play" with the settings, I'm asking why they were allowed to but didn't.

im in miami-dade

[CiXeL]

this is why im doing absentee. i moved here from LA, scared to death they wont want to count my vote since its a 3rd world country down here. i may be the only white guy in homestead.

Re:im in miami-dade

[Aqua_boy17]

I feel you pain, man. I have friends that used to say that "The nice thing about living in Miami is that it's so close to the United States". They're only half kidding. My wife was born in Colombia so since I've been married, I had a lot of opportunities to travel there. And driving around sometimes especially in Miami-Dade you can close your eyes, then open them and it's not hard to imagine that you really are in a 3rd world country somewhere.

I have several friends that voted absentee for the same reason and I've wavered on that so it's probably too late to apply for a ballot now. I don't know if you've been here long enough, but when Oliphant was our contentious Elections Supervisor in Broward, there were a bunch of absentee ballots found in her office that had never been counted (think this was in 2002 mid-term elections). And this happened late enough that the votes were disqualified. So I don't know that trust in the absentee system is well placed either.

Regardless, it's a pretty sad state of affairs when there's a fundamental mistrust in the voting system across the country. I'm actually hoping that some of these early reports may make things better, but I'm cynical to believe that they probably won't. Good luck to us...we're going to need it.

we shouldnt be rolling out beta technology

[CiXeL]

for something as important as this.

i can actually believe

[CiXeL]

that zillions of Floridians voted for Pat Buchanan

mostly up in the panhandle.

Re:Malice not required. DEMS COMPLAIN THE MOST

[dingDaShan]

The screens were imported from some far left country where social loafing reigns supreme due to lack of incentives and obscene taxes on making money.
Now that we have established that these touch screens are ineffective, lets examine the complaint:
Maybe the people that complain the most are the Dems? Maybe the screens work just as bad for republicans? Did these complainers try the republican option too in order to see if the problem is universal? Seriously, why is this on slashdot? Why isn't there something about John Kerry's recent attempt to kill the democratic party through his linguistic excellence and great sense of humor?

Keeping it simple

[Centurix]

Touchscreens? What's wrong with big buttons? Maybe they would be better with a Whack-a-mole machine?

I'm a registered libertarian in florida

[CiXeL]

this is fucking pissing me off

i mailed in the form for absentee and they said they didnt have me on file

i cant fill out a paper ballot either
i have to do that hackable computer shit

In the aftermath of the November 2000 Presidential Election, the Florida Legislature voted to decertify punch card voting systems. Beginning with the September 10, 2002 Primary Election, the Miami-Dade Elections Department is now utilizing a new voting system. A Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Voting System with "Touchscreen" technology is now being used at the Polling Places and an Optical Scan Voting System is now being used for mail-in absentee ballot voting.

wow. computers both ways??
this scares the fucking shit out of me

http://elections.miamidade.gov/voting_how_to.asp

THIS IS BULLSHIT
THIS IS NOT THE FUCKING UNITED STATES

Re:Burn down the Reichstag now and have done with

[dingDaShan]

Bush likes parties too much for that. It reminds him of college.

im a libertarian in south florida

[CiXeL]

moved here from los angeles

this is fucking pissing me off

i mailed in the form for absentee and they said they didnt have me on file

i cant fill out a paper ballot either
i have to do that hackable computer shit

In the aftermath of the November 2000 Presidential Election, the Florida Legislature voted to decertify punch card voting systems. Beginning with the September 10, 2002 Primary Election, the Miami-Dade Elections Department is now utilizing a new voting system. A Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Voting System with "Touchscreen" technology is now being used at the Polling Places and an Optical Scan Voting System is now being used for mail-in absentee ballot voting.

wow. computers both ways??
this scares the fucking shit out of me

http://elections.miamidade.gov/voting_how_to.asp

THIS IS BULLSHIT
THIS IS NOT THE FUCKING UNITED STATES

the deal

[DragonTHC]

the poll workers claim that it's not common for a machine that gets used so much to get out of sync.

the machine gets used once a year. In the eight years I've done work with kiosk systems, I've never once seen a heavily used touch screen get out of sync

apparently, that's why republicans are always listed first on the florida ballot.

we all got it wrong. the easiest way to steal an election is to shift the touch screen sync to make the votes for democrats appear as a vote for the republican.

the only thing I don't get is, how to they make the sync shift in only that part of the screen? why can you still click the forward button just fine?

another thing, wouldn't such a flaw in the touchscreen hardware and/or software make the whole machine unreliable for such a purpose?

Idiots should be able to vote

[John_Sauter]

The right to vote in the U.S. is not based on merit. The administrators of the elections do have the responsibility to make voting accessible for everyone, even those who *you* don't consider qualified.

I agree; it is important that idiots be able to vote because there are so many of us. We should be able to get the government we want without having to hang an aristocrat from every lamppost.

Vote Libertarian.

[HornWumpus]

It's voting against both halves of the Republicrats.

Re:Vote Libertarian.

[dunkelfalke]

look at russia in the 90ies to see what becomes of a country when libertarians have too much power.

Founding Father Quote:

[crhylove]

The only way you're going to get real elections back in this country is the tried and true path:

Give me Liberty or Give me Death.

Sadly, that means that a whole lot of people are going to have to receive a helping of item B so that the rest of us can have some of item A later on.

As soon as they whacked Kennedy the writing was on the wall. We haven't had a democracy since then, and the current chicanery in our elections (though highly visible and fairly blunt and obvious) aren't going to go away until somebody dies. Hopefully it's the unlawfully "elected" officials first, and in particular Katherine Harris, but more than likely it will be some college kids with guns and a firm belief in our original bill of rights, which sadly, a lot of us will probably have to die to re-instate at this point.

rhY

Re:Founding Father Quote:

[doom]

crhylove wrote:

The only way you're going to get real elections back in this country is the tried and true path:

Give me Liberty or Give me Death.

My considered opinion is that while the problems are bad, you should not exaggerate how bad they are. A damaged electoral system we may have, it is not certain that it's completely broken: the first thing is to try is to vote the bums out.

Further, I'm of the opinion that everyone here should familarize themselves with the term Agent Provacateur.

Oh, sorry, I mean: Agent Provacateur.

Re:Founding Father Quote:

[crhylove]

Well, I'd be with you, but I don't think Diebold is actually counting our votes.

Re:I can't see the problem here

[aeryn_sunn]

"Lazy people on social programs", geez, I hope you are being sarcastic and do not honestly believe that "lazy people on social programs" are bogeymen for why we have to pay taxes...at most, Welfare, food stamps, housing assistance take up 8% of the budget, about 80 billion... see here table S-4, under Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (about half goes to education) and see this which breaks down the 2004 budget in a nice little pie chart...

I tire of hearing this "blame the poor" for taxes, when it is not the poor who are busting the budget... plus, the assumption that all poor people are lazy is absurd and groundless. Social programs help this country... it helps people that need it... granted, there those that probably are lazy, but those are few and far between...

If you want to bitch about taxes and be angry, why not take umbrage at the deductions for mortgages on 2nd homes and boats and cap the mortgage deduction, which cost the taxpayers some 70 billion a year, hell, I am all for eliminating the mortgage deduction all together. If home ownership is really THAT important and compelling as Bush pontificates in his "ownership society" babbling, then there does not need to be a mortgage deduction incentive... also, get rid of deductions for state and local taxes which cost taxpayers 50 Billion a year, which in addition to saving the taxpayers money, I figure this will make the Rep and Senators in high tax states more accountable to their constituents in cutting government spending since those constituents in high tax states will not be able to deduct their state taxes... hell, I would even get rid of the child tax credit...if you want kids, then pay for them yourself and not make the rest of us without kids subsidize those with, or those of us that waited until we were financially secure so that we could afford to take care of our kids before we had them... and for heavans sakes, lets not Jettison the estate tax, since it would cost about 90 billion a year if it was eliminated. As the estate tax stands today, it only affects some 2% of the population

Anyway, the whole point is to look else where when bitching about taxes... don't always blame the poor... there are plenty of more substantive ways to cut taxes than simply projecting one's anger on the poor.

Statistically valid sample size

[Meph_the_Balrog]

Ahh, but if there were indeed only 3 reported instances, would this constitute a statistically valid sample? or is it just coincidental?

I ask as a totally disinterested third party - I'm not American and don't plan on trying to become one.

Whee!

[obeythefist]

First off, I'm Australian so I can only view the political crisis in the former USA from an external viewpoint.

When will the USA cease calling itself a democracy? Is it truly the will of the people and their "democratically elected" power base to invade sovereign nations and depose their leaders? Will GWB renounce the title of President for something more appropriate like Czar or King or Father? What's the new name for this new north american empire?

Seriously, from outside, the transition from democracy to authoritarian autocracy looks like a kind of funny joke, although funny in the same way you might laugh at a train wreck victim to try and break the gutwrenching horror you're feeling.

Democrats kill the paper ballot act.

[HornWumpus]

When Republicans add voter ID requirements.

They call the modified bill racist.

Recalibration? For what?

[Sir Holo]

How often do you use an ATM and have the touch-screen read you selection incorrectly? How about never?

Partisanship and security

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The Democrats offer no real solutions
The Democratic agenda includes cutting health care costs by targeting research at curing chronic diseases rather than treating them, training the whole population intensively in emergency response (imagine Katrina with every citizen having disaster training), simplifying the tax code to where low-income families can actually claim the EITC, and so on.

>Why can't we just focus on the problems with electronic voting rather than turning it into a political debate? Why can't we just say that the design is flawed and should not be used?

Because one of the problems is a conflict of interest. Some voting machine vendors are political activists. They need to be neutral unless they can be audited.

>A company can have a bad or flawed design without malicious intent.

Can, and probably will without great care. Secure design is tough work. On the other hand we've seen so many bizarre decisions in voting machine design that our faith in incompetence is being tested. Making it possible for the operator of the tabulating machine to change the totals is insane, not just incompetent. Not fixing that design when it's pointed out, well, draw your own conclusions.

This particular incident is boring. Touch screens do go out of calibration, it's too detectable an error to be a good way to commit fraud, and only an excellent design could avoid it.

Automatic Calibration

[DavidD_CA]

Seems to me a simple solution to this would be to have the software do an automatic calibration each time someone steps up to vote.

Put a small "Touch Here to Start" button on the center of the screen and use that for calibration. Put some error-checking in place if the person "clicks" way outside the button.

Couple that with extra large voting buttons and I doubt you'll have any calibration issues.

97 Reasons Democrats Are Weak On Defense

[slapout]

97 Reasons Democrats Are Weak On Defense And Can't Be Trusted To Govern In Wartime

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialconten t.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=244423511626964

Overused spots?

[FishinDave]

From the Miami Herald article:

"As for a conspiracy, election officials say that the machines can get out of sync if a particular spot is overused..."

So too many people are voting for Democrats?

it don't take a conspiracy

[floydvoid]

It don't take a conspiricy to make idiots screw up . I spend a lot of time fixing the results of people who can't ( or wont) follow SIMPLE instructions . RTFM yeah right.

touchscreens aren't that unreliable/inaccurate

[SuperBanana]

It says nothing about why the terminals were malfunctioning, which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time)

Uh, no. Touchscreen technology has been around since the late 70's, and I remember using some circa-late-80's touchscreens that needed calibration, but only within an inch or less.

Touchscreens are in wide, wide use, including many applications where "regular" miscalibration problems would be completely unacceptable. Ie, medical systems, industrial (milling) equipment, ATMs, etc. Even self-checkout stations at stores have touchscreens, and I've never hit one that didn't register the correct button-push.

Not to mention: these machines are brand spanking new and in many cases made by companies which should be thoroughly familiar with the issues of touchscreen technology (example, Diebold, an ATM maker.)

I just don't "get" all of these problems. Here in MA, you fill in the bubble with a pencil, and stick your ballot in a machine in front of a poll worker. Moreover, you mark your ballot in complete privacy- you step into a booth and close a curtain...

Somebody, Please Do This Ad

[darkonc]

I had this idea for an ad, but my animation skills suck, and my attempt at doing one, anyways, died with the loss of two disk drives....

Scene: A screen with the question: "

• Do you trust computers to count your vote?
• Yes
• No

As the first 9 voters vote, a text over (or even voice over) appears:
"8 out of 10 hackers surveyed don't trust computer companies to count their vote"

As each voter casts their vote, the on-screen tally counts.... It ends up with 8 "No"s and 1 "Yes"

The 10th voter comes in and executes an 'easter-egg' a three-finger touch at the top and bottom edges of the right hand side of the screen, and the middle of the left side.......
a happy face appears in the middle of the screen, and this 'voter' touches just to the right of it... The happy face turns green.

Then he touches the "yes" button, and the on screen count quickly rolls back to 6 "Yes" and 4 "No".

The text-over gets' appended to.

Two do.

Now, while I'm at this, can somebody point me to the article (I think it was a slashdot article) where they ran the poll that I'm referring to?? I do remember a poll being done that found that about 80% of the "hackers" at a convention said that they didn't trust computerized voting, but there is so much noise about diebold et al, that I haven't been able to find it again.

Can anybody give me a pointer?

This election

[freedom_india]

I can BET my monthly salary that this sweet election will be won by Republicans "fair" and "square".
Of course there will be "occassional glitches", that Dems will shout about, but nothing out of ordinary.

And we, citizens will go back to watching Lost and Desperate Housewives....

And once Reps win both houses, they will go to enact two Golden Rules: "Allow the president to seek office more than 2 times." , "Allow a simple majority to override Fundamental rights without SCOTUS oversight."
Of course with the SCOTUS now in Bushco hands, am sure they will not raise their finger...
I for one, welcome our new whitehouse overlords...wait there's the new season of BSG...
Gotta go..

Tag the Story as Faimbait

[Schlaegel]

The summary is a bit misleading. Yes, the voting machines are flawed. Yes, the idea of closed box voting machines is flawed. Yes, the concept that a computer user interface is more conceptually clear than a pen and paper user interface is flawed. But, no, this is not a story about a Republican conspiracy, it is a story about touch screens needing calibration. It happens that both of the anecdotes relayed in the story are of Democrats needing assistance because of the miscalibration. If anything, this shows the bias of the author.

I wish the government would just do away with the electronic voting machines, the strong partisans don't need any extra excuse to complain when their candidate looses.

Also, Slashdot doesn't have to report this as a Republican versus Democrat issue, but it did. Slashdot is News for Nerds, not News for Democrats.

save us from the idiots

[r00t]

We could at least randomize the order of the candidates so that idiots voting for the first name on the list won't affect the results.

Any yes/no questions should be written both ways, with each voter randomly getting it one way or the other.

Re:And this is the Republicans' fault how?

[dangitman]

No, I'm just looking for facts, not speculation.

Randomness & Probability

[The Master Control P]

The problem is that the errors being seen in Florida aren't random in the sense being ascribed to them; ie they aren't a case of the system getting data but assigning votes by polling random(). If the errors occurred as you describe, with the system having a probability p of making a mistake independent of intended choice, we would be seeing (for example) pQ/3 republicans and 2pQ/3 democrats in every Q voters who get a screwup. However, currently the mistake patterns indicate that P and intended choice are not independent, because significantly more than 2pQ/3 democrats (and since the sum of Qi must add up to Q, significantly less than pQ/3 republicans) are reporting problems in a 2/3 democratic district as TFA describes. And not only are the democrats getting the errors once, they're getting them repeatedly.

Interestingly enough, we just did something relevant to this in my statistics class, binomial probability. If an event has a probability k of outcome A and probability q (= 1-k) of outcome B for each of N trials, then the probability of A happening X times is: N cr X k^X q^(N-X). Let N represent the number of errors, X the number in favor of Republicans, k the chance of an error in favor of the Republican, q the chance of an error favoring the Democrat. After all is said and done, I would be most interested to put in .5 for k and q and see what the probability of these problems occurring as recorded if they are truly random is. And even more interested to see what k and q result in an answer of 1/2.

If you're willing to concede that the probability of what's happenning occurring by chance is small if the errors are assumed random, then think about it. A vote counting machine that can't count right indicates that it's designer was an idiot. A vote counting machine that most likely counts wrong by design is cause for it's designer to be charged, tried and executed for high treason.

[Seriously, Diebold, this isn't a fucking rocket science: if(choiceA) { candidateA ++; } else if(choiceB) { candidateB ++; }. Personally, I suspect that the fraud code is unlikely to be something as blatant as "choiceA += 1000; choiceB -= 1000;" or "if(choiceA) { if((random() % 5000) 2500) { candidateB++; } else { candidateA++; } }". More likely, it will be something slightly more subtle; A switch with Republican as the default instead of just another case: label, perhaps? Or something very subtle, like declaring first demCounter and then errorCounter[], and having an integrity check routine that decrements errorCounter[-1] in an edge circumstance that could quite legitimately have been missed? You can never trust a machine if you can't trust at least one of it's makers, it's operators, or it's users not to be malicious.]

Touchscreen out of sync, technical

[splutty]

Normally when a touchscreen goes out of sync, it means that the start of your scanning cycle moves either positive or negative. This will result in your touches actually ending up shifted opposed to what's on the screen.

Simply put: If you have 500 columns on your screen and a button in column 50-150 and one in 350-450, with a shift of 200-300 positive your pushing the 50-150 button will actually end up in 350-450 (and for that matter, your 350-450 should en up in the other one with a 100-200 positive shift)

Depending on where the buttons are located and how the touchscreen overlay is configured, out of sync might actually end up favouring one specific 'button'..

Splut.

Re:User Error

[Hijacked Public]

Turning a phrase I suspect you and your code writing think-alike below will understand: Your saving throw failed.

your full of SH EEEE TTTT

[cheekyboy]

Seriously, who cares if a pres sleeps and has 50 girls.

Id rather have an honest pres thats loves whores than one
who would rather take over earth with his neocon nazi friends.

I love being monitored just like how Adolf did in the 40s with IBMS help mind you.

Ok you can go back to work at Rumsfelds office and kiss ass until they dump you in the river.

Feh

[Guppy06]

Living as I do in the one Florida county that actually got its 2000 recount done on time, I'll be voting the same way I did last year and the year before, filling out bubbles on a piece of paper with a magic marker.

Re:Drop the FUD: read the ACTUAL Miami Herald Arti

[cbacba]

I guess the old butterfly ballots were also biased against the dems in their primary districts. Maybe they shoulda tried the #2 pencil approach instead of going higher tech.

I would imagine if there were shenanigans going on in a democrat controlled area that some idiot changed the adjustment the wrong way.

Then again, maybe there is a problem inherent in the machines. It might be that all the preplanned leftist dem complaints about voting in florida last time may have backfired. It might just be that using an intellegent machine to try to vote a nonintellegent choice may have created biases. But, never fear, the left doesn't believe in popular elections for other than their candidates so they'll fix the problem when they get in power.

Greed, of course.

[Kadin2048]

Oh, that's easy: greed.

I don't know if it's true, but elsewhere in this thread, people have said that Diebold's voting machines aren't even of their own design; they're something they acquired from another company, and were originally designed for non-critical applications (American Idol, pick-your-favorite-cookie-brand in a supermarket, etc.), and thus are ridiculously unsuited for use in an actual political election.

That Diebold pushed for these machines to be used in elections (and worse, that the government allowed them) certainly makes them at least criminally negligent. Don't think that I'm in any way absolving them from that. But the motives that would lead them to try to put some chintzy piece of crap into an election is obvious. A real voting-machine would cost more money to manufacture, yet municipalities have a basically fixed budget for paying for these things (basically the cost of replacing their existing punchcard/lever/pen-and-paper system). By using crap machines, yet still charging the municipalities whatever they can possibly afford, Diebold makes much more money than if they made a good system. Also, it leaves them room in their profit margins to undercut a 'good' system, should anyone actually make one. As other people have pointed out, they do a fine job of engineering ATMs, because banks wouldn't put up with the crap they foist on the public. But since state and local governments have bent over and accepted shitty voting machines, they're not going to do any better. The economics of mediocrity are obvious.

If there is a political conspiracy in all of this Diebold stuff, it's in how Diebold got so many places to buy it's shoddy equipment and put it into use. (And for this, I have no doubt that they leveraged their 'contributions,' 'lobbyists,' and other forms of what we used to call bribery.) You don't need a political conspiracy to explain their motivations, you need only look right here.

Re:User Error

[edward2020]

Was that an AD&D reference? If so, we need to start all over and roll inititive :)

Not greed, apathy or conspiracy.

[mqsoh]

I do not think that attributing it to greed is at all obvious. I do not think that a politician, especially an incumbent, would want the outcome of the election to be random. Who will hack these machines? What will be their inclination? A Republican would not want a Democrat altering the machine; a Democrat would not want a Republican altering the machine. That is obvious and, I would think, sufficient motive to keep these machines out of an election - especially if the budget to cover the replacement of current machines is already available.

Diebold's only purpose may be to sell machines at the highest profit, but we have elected representatives deciding to use their shoddy merchandise. It is a stupid decision unless one can guarantee who has access to the machine. It could also be that the machine does not matter. Regardless, there is something more than incompetence and more than greed behind the decision. Whether it is a conspiracy or complete apathy it is dangerous.

Re:Excellent!!

[DudeTheMath]

Buzz! Thank you for playing. Florida is very nearly evenly split (remember 2000?), even "South Florida" (considering that the U. of South Florida is 'way up here in Tampa, "South Florida" is a pretty big place).

Dade County (Miami) is strongly conservative (primarily due to a large Cuban population), but Palm Beach County is certainly not (possibly due to a large New York retiree population), and no matter whether you consider Tampa part of South Florida, Palm Beach surely is.

Re:Drop the FUD: read the ACTUAL Miami Herald Arti

[misscee]

I'm a voing system technician. It's a calibration issue or it could possibly be a deliberate " miscalibration." It is not standard operating procedure to calibrate the machines in the moring when we run our zero tapes and perform other tasks to get the machines ready (doesn't make a whole lot of sense.) That's what I think is probably behind these kinds of stories. Mistakes are a non issue. We all know that errors are random and do not benefit one particular party over the other.