Can Static Electricity Generate Votes?

artgeeq writes "A recent local election in Washington, DC resulted in 1500 extra votes for a candidate. The board of elections is now claiming that static electricity caused the malfunction. Is this even remotely possible? If so, couldn't an election be invalidated pretty easily?"

Comments

Re:Excuse me?

[nate_in_ME]

Most areas have a "no-campaigning" zone a certain distance from voting sites. I know here in Maine, you see a bunch of "vote for me" signs leading up to the voting sites, then they all end right by the sign that says "no campaigning beyond this point." I tried finding a good article about it, but this was the best i could find quickly...http://dallassouthblog.com/2008/09/23/no-campaign-t-shirts-or-buttons-inside-texas-new-york-new-jersey-and-other-polling-places/

Both the summary and article are FUBAR

[Pinckney]

You can read the board's report on their site [pdf].

Highlights include the following:

Sequoia was the manufacturer of the machines.

They don't know why the error happened. It could have been static, or many other things. The board "accepts Sequoia's determination,reflected in its response to the board's queries, that multiple possibilities regarding the cause of the tabulation error exist, including: the speed which the Memory Packs were processed leading to some type of transient malfunction in the MPR unit; the Memory Pack not making full contact inside the MPR socket; or some type of electrical or static discharge taking place while inserting,reading or ejecting the cartridges at a rapid speed."

"Random numbers" were added to vote totals. They say nothing about write-in votes, except that their procedure calls for auditing vote tallies by looking for "large write-in vote numbers, more recorded votes than registered voters".

The errors were confined to precinct 141 in ward 2.

They recorded 4759 votes, while their audit found that only 326 were cast.

Re:slot machines are protected from static shocks

[systemeng]

I always post this on voting machine articles but here goes. . . Take a look at 1.020 in the attached nevada gaming regulations: http://gaming.nv.gov/documents/pdf/techstds_05nov17_adopted.pdf Slot machines are required to withstand 20,000V static shocks at 1 second intervals with no problems whatsoever. They are also required to withstand 27,000 volt static zaps which can cause them to freeze momentarily but must cause no loss of any stored data.

In contrast, when I worked on DDR SDRAM clock buffer chips for PC's, I believe the ESD test was something like 1500 volts.

In short, if voting machines cannot meet the Nevada gaming commission regulations then politicians are at best gambling with our votes.

Re:What's in a word?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the OED:

Snafu:
...
C. n. Now usu. with a and pl. A confusion or mix-up; a hitch, mishap; muddle, confused state.

Does that make then susceptible to "clickers"?

[Mr_Tulip]

In my mis-spent youth, I was able to get free credits from certain arcade machines by holding the exposed part of a lighter (the piezo-ignition type) against the coin slot, and pressing button to set off the electric charge. Every 10 or so 'clicks' would result in a free credit. If these voting machines are susceptible to static electricity, using a clicker on it would likely cause some sort of mischief as well. Oh well, back to the old lead pencil and paper voting, I say :)

Re:Valid election?

[Skrapion]

You might want to check out the video in this news post. Printing a human-readable ballot isn't as secure as you may think.

Counting paper ballots also isn't the most secure option, given how easy it would be for volunteers to "lose" ballots. Ideally the votes should be counted both ways to ensure that they line up.

The most secure system I can think of would use scantron cards and have the voter verify that the scanning machine reads the card properly and then either returns the ballot (if invalid) or deposits it into the ballot box through a clear tube.

I'd also be interested in a system that points cameras at the voting machines and broadcasts the video across the Internet, so that people can independently verify the votes. Of course, that would require huge amounts of bandwidth, and people might consider video of their hand voting an invasion of privacy, especially if you're the only black guy in your town.

Re:My friends

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever is elected...

Here's the standard they should meet.

[Animats]

The Nevada Gaming Commission has been there and done that. Here are their standards for immunity to static electricity for slot machines. Every slot machine in Nevada meets these standards. (Yes, they test.)

1.020 Electrical interference immunity.

1. A conventional gaming device or client must exhibit total immunity to human body electrostatic discharges on all player-exposed areas. For purposes of this standard, a human body discharge is considered to be an electrical potential of not greater than 20,000 volts DC discharged through a network with a series resistance of 150 to 1500 ohms shunted by a capacitance of 100 to 150 picofarads. The device must withstand this discharge repeated at one second intervals. The power source for this human body equivalent is a high-impedance source such that, in effect, the energy available for a given discharge is limited to that contained in the shunt capacitor.
2. A gaming device may exhibit temporary disruption when subjected to electrostatic discharges of 20,000 to 27,000 volts DC through a network with a series resistance of 150 to 1500 ohms shunted by a capacitance of 100 to 150 picofarads, but must exhibit a capacity to recover and complete an interrupted play without loss or corruption of any stored or displayed information and without component failure.
3. Gaming device power supply filtering must be sufficient to prevent disruption of the device by repeated switching on and off of the AC power. The device must not exhibit disruption when a 1 microfarad capacitor, charged to plus or minus 680 volts DC is discharged between the hot and neutral AC supply lines, at any phase from zero to 360 degrees, with a repetition rate of 30 times per second.

In other words, short of firing a Taser at the thing, you can't interfere with a slot machine with static electricity. (And if you did fire a Taser at the thing, alarms would go off.)

Re:Here's the standard they should meet.

[storkus]

I'm from Nevada and a former slot mechanic, and I can tell you this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak: most of the methods used to cheat on electronic slots can probably be used against these voting machines as well. The above is all assuming an intact machine with no extra holes: considering how easy it is to hide a Dremel tool or other cordless drill, it shouldn't be hard to make a small hole and send a shock inside. This is why modern slots also have the mobo itself housed in its own cage.

Personally, though, my problem with the whole electoral process is: who watches the watchers? Assuming you can keep the voting machines from being tampered with, what's to keep someone from messing with the count at HQ where everything's tallied up? It's not like it hasn't happened before...

Re:My friends

[Anonymous Coward]

Whom so ever...

Re:Excuse me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Electioneering is generally prohibited within a certain area around polling stations.

Re:Problem already solved ELSEWHERE

[Anonymous Coward]

The manual process is good BUT France is testing voting machines for a few years now.. The only valid point do change the methode is a faster result since reliability is not proven. Except that we (I'm french btw) already have the final results of any election around 10pm since very few regions are in a diffrent time zone.
Any idea why any country would implement such an buggy automated process ?