Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election

For only the second time in California history, a judge in Alameda County voided an election result and called for the election to be re-run, because the e-voting tallies from Diebold machines couldn't be audited. The vote was on a controversial ballot measure addressing the operation of medical marijuana dispensaries, and the result was a close margin. Activists went to court to demand a recount, but after the lawsuit was filed, elections officials sent voting machines back to Diebold. The court found that 96% of the necessary audit information had been erased. The judge ordered the ballot measure to be re-run in the next election.

Comments

Re:Yay! Now ban the machines

[will_die]

If you had read the article, you would know that the problem was not the machines.
The city did perform a dump of the data before they returned the machines to Diebold; that was the responsibility of the people in california. Diebold was clearing the machines and when told to stop they did, however only 20 of the 400+ machines had not been cleared.

Re:Shame on...

[will_die]

From the article it was the responsibility of the place holding the vote to do the dump of the data.
Diebold was responible for clearing the machine once it was returned, which they did.

Re:Info on the ACTUAL measure being voted on

[Secrity]

"The initiative lost again in a recount."

The judge ruled that it did not lose on a recount and that the measure is to go back on the ballot in the next election. It was found that it was impossible to do a recount because the data had been erased.

Re:It's a question of degree

[Scrameustache]

it's less harmful than alcohol, which is legal. I don't know enough say for sure that marijuana is less harmful Not a single person in the history of mankind has smoked himself to death with Cannabis, ever.

But with booze (in the United States alone): The annual average number of deaths for which alcohol poisoning was listed as an underlying cause was 317, with an age-adjusted death rate of 0.11 per 100,000 population. An average of 1,076 additional deaths included alcohol poisoning as a contributing cause, bringing the total number of deaths with any mention of alcohol poisoning to 1,393 per year (0.49 per 100,000 population).