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Diebold Admits Ohio Machines May Lose Votes

Posted by kdawson on from the i-didn't-do-it-nobody-saw-me-you-can't-prove-anything dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Premier Election Solutions (a subsidiary of Diebold) has acknowledged a flaw that causes the systems to lose votes. It cannot be patched before the election and the machines are used in half of Ohio's counties, but they are issuing guidelines for avoiding the problem that presumably contain a work-around. While Diebold initially blamed anti-virus software for the glitch, they have now discovered that the bug was their own fault for not recording votes to memory when the cards are uploaded in 'certain circumstances' — something their initial analysis missed. It would be nice to hope that Ohio poll workers would be tech-savvy enough to make this a non-issue, but they had poll worker shortages last year and might need tech-savvy people to volunteer."

5 of 502 comments (clear)

  1. Open Voting by TheSpoom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is at this point that I would normally point people to the Open Voting Consortium, but unless I'm missing something, the project stalled some time back in 2006. Yet they're still taking donations...

    Am I missing something or is it time for a fork? Because I think we definitely need an open, easily verifiable voting system.

    I don't even think it needs to be a LiveCD as the current project seems to have. What is so difficult about making a paper trail?

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs
    1. Re:Open Voting by FredFredrickson · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, we just keep waiting, waiting for things to get worse. And they do. And nothing happens. So we wait longer- and things do get worse.. But it gets worse a little at a time, and we keep procastinating. We need to revolt before it's too late..

      --
      Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
    2. Re:Open Voting by spiffyman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Nonsense. Thomas Jefferson explicitly worries about the ability of our system to have legitimate control over future generations, given the constant revolutions we go through.

      At one point, he even suggests that we should wipe out all laws every 19 years (a number he derived from population density and life expectancy at the time).

      If this thread picks up I'll go find the citations for this. It's in TJ's letters (to Madison, I believe).

      Revolution, armed or not, is at the core of our system of government.

      --
      So you can laugh all you want to...
  2. why do these machines remain certified? by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Please, someone give me a reasonable explanation as to why these machines remained certified for the last 8 years despite all this crap?

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  3. Ohio requires partisan poll workers by stinerman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd be more than happy to be a poll worker (I'd even forfeit my salary to be one), except for the simple fact that one has to be a registered Democrat or Republican to be a poll worker in Ohio, which requires a statement made under penalty of election falsification (a felony) that you do indeed agree with the principles of the party and desire to be affiliated with them.

    As I do not support the principles of either major party nor do I wish to be affiliated with either one, I cannot be a poll worker unless I commit a felony (which would probably bar me from being a poll worker).

    Now, I'm obviously going a bit overboard here. No one really cares if you lie about your partisan identification. Republicans crossed over like crazy in the primary to vote for Clinton, but no one ever got arrested for it. In any case, I take such oaths seriously, so I can't be a poll worker.