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Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?

Posted by Zonk on from the lessee-nothin-into-nothin-carry-the-nothin dept.

whoever57 writes "Ed Felten is showing a scan of the summary from a Sequoia voting machine used in New Jersey. According to the paper record, the vote tallies don't add up — the total number of Republican ballots does not match the number of votes cast in the Republican primary and the total number of Democratic ballots does not match the number of votes cast in the Democratic primary. Felten has a number of discussions about the problems facing evoting, up to and including a semi-threatening email from Sequoia itself." Update: 03/20 23:30 GMT by J : Later today, Felten added an update in which he analyzes Sequoia's explanation. He has questions, comments, and a demand.

9 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Count from Zero by jibster · · Score: 5, Funny

    Both tallies are out by 1 count. Could it be the one is counting from zero and the other from one?

    On the bright side at least the error will vanish as the number of votes approaches infinity :)

    1. Re:Count from Zero by 91degrees · · Score: 3, Funny

      I suspect it's actually a data error. Dems have one too many, GOP have one too few. This is exactly the number of votes cast for Guiliani. They could have simply set him to the wrong party.

    2. Re:Count from Zero by bryce4president · · Score: 2, Funny

      If the voting machine used some sort of "stance on issues" to determine the party of the candidate I could see how they thought Guliani was a Dem, but since it should just be some field that is entered, maybe the data entry person got it mixed up :)

  2. it's like the Kempelen's chess machine by someone1234 · · Score: 2, Funny

    The little gnome in the machine made a slight error. So what?

    --
    Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
    1. Re:it's like the Kempelen's chess machine by why-is-it · · Score: 3, Funny

      The little gnome in the machine made a slight error. So what?

      Maybe they should try running KDE instead?

      --
      *** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
  3. A Common Problem. by oahazmatt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Considering that this article was listed as showing "11 of 3 Comments" I think this is quite a common problem.

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    Those who believe the Internet is private,
    find their privates are on the Internet.
  4. Slashdot Polls by ke5aux · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ok, thats it! We need the source code for /. polls.

    1. Re:Slashdot Polls by ke5aux · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, looks like they have nothing to hide so it's not worth it.

  5. It's quite obvious what happened by whitehatlurker · · Score: 2, Funny

    The machine counted the vote for Giuliani as being for the Democratic party.

    --
    .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.