CS Students Called In To Monitor E-Voting

An anonymous reader writes, "Electronic voting machines used in Tuesday's elections apparently caused only isolated problems, although watchdog groups say it's too early to give an overall grade to their performance. One county in California, hoping to avoid any technological glitches, hired computer-science graduate students to set up and troubleshoot the machines. The behind-the-scenes look revealed some warning signs of e-voting." From the article: "The county election official expected many elderly poll workers to be confused by the technology, so she recruited... 59 computer-science graduate students from [UC] Davis to help poll workers troubleshoot the machines on Election Day."

Comments

Hmm

[Alaria Phrozen]

They really need to change the name of 'computer science' here in the states. We CS majors don't know anything about software. If you want some good software gurus, talk to the math people.

good article but...

[rilian4]

If the GOP had carried one or both houses of congress by a slim margin, you people would be screaming about this. The article references many of the same problems that have been expressed in past elections w/ electronic voting machines and in many of the same well known precincts such as Broward County in the Miami area yet there has been little to no response here on /. or elsewhere. I repeat, if the GOP had carried one or both houses and the problems happened as reported in this article, there would be screaming matches over it...Why aren't there now?

I am conservative and I was very unhappy to learn about all the problems w/ e-voting..even when Conservatives won elections. I want it to be understood by all involved that if someone wins an election, they did so by real votes, not fake ones. Just because someone wins by a close margin should not automatically mean the opposition can immediately accuse them of vote rigging. The fact that no one is making a stink about these problems now that the GOP lost ground bothers me a lot. If you were out there preaching the evils of e-voting before, do so now as well..I don't see any significant improvement from the last election in this area. Where are your voices now liberals? Practice what you preach!

Re:good article but...

[geek2718]

There is a difference between crying foul the day after the election, and acting to ensure fair voting. Last time around, the same people were doing both, because of who happened to win. This time liberals aren't going to cry foul, for obvious reasons. I imagine, though, that they will happily stand up and agree that e-voting systems are still problematic, and document instances of problems. They simply aren't up in arms as much, since they believe that, for the most part, the right person won this time (perhaps in spite of the rigging that they believe the conservatives are doing.) Of course many conservatives quite reasonably are part of fair voting movements. They weren't crying foul last time, for obvious reasons, and it is up to them as to why they are silent this time. Perhaps, the problem for conservative vote conspiracy theorists is that in most of the states in question, the power and opportunity mostly resides with the conservatives, so they are in a tougher position to argue that the election results are invalid. Not an impossible position, just tougher.

Let Casino's run electronic voting

[derfla8]

I don't know if anyone has brought this up yet; however, a colleague of mine raised a seriously good point. If anyone is an expert at fraud prevention with electronic selection, it has to be the casino's or the people who build electronic gambling devices such as slot machines. I mean, isn't there some sort of permanent record on all slot machines where the casino can verify that no cheating has occurred? Haven't casino's figured out the majority of ways people can defraud them of money? Maybe people should let casino's run elections. I mean, you'd probably get a better voter turnout at the casinos when there's a possibility of a free buffet as a frequent voter!