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Voting Machines and 'Calibration Drift'
An anonymous reader writes "Tuesday saw elections for school boards and city officials throughout Kansas. In Saline, ES&S voting machines in several locations were 'mis-calibrated,' and when the voter touched next to one candidate's name, the 'x' appeared next to another one. One person I talked to said he tried to vote three times before going to the 80-something-year-old election worker, who told him 'It was doing that earlier, but I thought I fixed it.' From the story in today's Salina Journal: 'The iVotronic machines used in Saline County are sold by Elections Systems and Software. In October, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law notified 16 secretaries of state, including Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh, that the machines are known to record votes to the wrong candidate.' The county does calibrate the machines the day before each election, but, '... in conversations with ES&S on Thursday, [the county clerk] was told that the calibration might change during the day. "What they've seen is calibration drift on a unit," Merriman said. "They're fine in the morning, but by afternoon they're starting to lose their calibration."' There was also coverage of the problems when they occurred two days ago."
One person I talked to said he tried to vote three times before going to the 80-something-year-old election worker, who told him 'It was doing that earlier, but I thought I fixed it.'
What does that have to do with anything? It's not in TFA. Am I supposed to just take your word for it? Even so, what's it supposed to mean? Old people can't calibrate newfangled voodoo touchscreens?
This level of incompetency should be punished by death.
How hard would it be to just calibrate per use? I know on things like a Palm Pilot you just touch three places and it's good to go. Why not do that for each voter (or at least offer it to each voter)?
Right. I've been using touchscreen gear for more than 11 years now. Monitors with touchscreens built in, tablet PCs, iMacs with touch-enabling overlays, two cintiqs of my own and many dozens I've sold and supported to graphic artists.
They NEVER 'drift'. I've not seen even the cheapest touchscreen gear 'drift'. What's with this drift excuse? That smells too much like an excuse for throwing elections. Color me for stating the obvious, but sorry that sounds too suspicious.
My Motorola PDA can stay calibrated for weeks on end, and the touch-screen PC in my hardware store paint department has been calibrated for over a year, but they can't keep a voting machine calibrated for more than a few hours?
Now when the pundits say the electorate is "drifting to the left" we'll know it's not a political shift but just a calibration drift.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Ready printed paper slips in envelopes.
1. Pick the paper with your candidate on it.
2. Put it in the envelope.
3. Put the envelope in the sealed voting box.
4. Profit!!! (From a system that works)
But the US would probably screw it up some way or the other like mandating dusting every paper slip for fingerprints to go in a database or some such in order to control voting. Or something even more insane.
Software used in space shuttles hardly ever fails to put the heap of complex technology it governs safely in orbit...
So every time I see another voting-machine-screwup, I wonder how it is possible that writing software used for voting (imo an equally, if not more important human activity) is apparently such a daunting task that it fails time and time again.
if this were the 70's and touch screen was brand new tech I would believe this.
however it's not the 70's and every touch screen device i have ever seen holds it's calibration or doesn't need to be calibrated. From ATM's that are exposed directly to outdoor weather to late 90's production eBook readers to the Nintendo DS I have never once seen one lose calibration in any reasonable time and it's rare to need to calibrate at all except when combining a touch sensor to a system not built for touch sensor use.
this is outright election fraud and IMO it is treason and should be dealt with accordingly.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
What we have here is a failure to communicate, due to willful avoidance of understanding.
...happened in Finland last week. A few municipalities tested electronic voting in the last (municipal) elections and when (unsurprisingly) irregularities occurred (232 votes were not counted properly), the results were challenged all the way to the supreme court, which now decided that the elections must be held again. The lawyer representing the appealing parties has said that he doubts that any politician will ever propose electronic voting in this country again.
That outcome is thus quite positive but it would've been even better if the minister responsible for it had accepted her responsibility and resigned like many people demanded her to.
Put physical buttons of to the side of the screen to press. How difficult was that?
And yes, the drift excuse sounds like B.S.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
The most probable explanation is extremly shoddy hardware engineering combined with extremly shoddy software engienering ina bid to make as much benefit as possible. I have seen this with another touch screen machine, and although I did not ask the team what was the problem in detail, the aforementionned point were the problem. The old adage probablym hold : Never attribute to malice what can adequately explained by idiocy and/or greed.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So you would like to vote for candedate X... but you're not entirely sure yet.
Why don't I drift you in the right direction, shall I? *wink*
Touchscreen calibration? I used to work for a company that built quiz machines and the like for the UK pub industry (circa 2000). Essentially they were simple PC's with a touchscreen (the monitor had a PS2 output).
We used to leave those machines running at various sites for YEARS, and I can't ever remember a calibration problem. And trust me, we'd know because when a customer starts to lose money they let the pub know about it all right. The biggest problem we had was the coin slot mechanism screwing up.
So now you're telling me that almost 10 years later and the calibration in a voting machine can't last A WHOLE GODDAMN DAY? That's service so bad it almost makes me believe in the conspiracy angle!
It isn't a good idea to joke about government corruption. A lot of people think that there may be some deliberate intent to defraud voters, hiding behind "equipment problems".
The U.S. government is VERY corrupt. For other examples, see The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One and the Slashdot story EFF Says Obama Warrantless Wiretap Defense Is Worse than Bush. There are people in control of the U.S. government who believe in limitless surveillance, dominance of the banks, and killing to make money and get control of oil.
I failed the test to get my learner's permit because of this very same thing. There weren't confirmations, and the screen calibration was off by at least 20 pixels.
Why do they even bother with touch screens? Why don't they do like ATM's and have actual buttons on the side of the screen that you would use to select your options?
Yes, touch screens are "cooler" but why not use a proven technology? Shoot, they may even be able to save money since a regular LCD is a tad bit cheaper than a touch screen.
Also what is this BS about drift? My Touch Pro was calibrated ONCE and it hasn't drifted (and I know plenty of iphone users who don't have "drift" problems). Could it be do to the size of the screen?
has this problem.
Granted, I've only been developing apps for them since about 1991, but I've NEVER seen any "calibration drift".
Heck, if the Client wants to "calibrate" them, I usually have to root around in the menus to find the CAL function. Touch the top right corner...
They just work.
What sort of cheap crap are the voters paying for?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I'm no conspiracy theorist but aren't their like, oh I don't know, A MILLION TOUCHSCREEN ATMS AROUND THE WORLD? I don't recall hearing about this calibration issue with them. I guess it's possible that since the banks definitely want it to be accurate they make sure they work.
Why wouldn't someone want the voting machines to work? William D Howell Sr.
How difficult would it be to have the user enter his/her vote, and then before the "ballot" is registered, show a confirmation screen, which would then require the voter to hit yes or no?
If an ATM machine can do a decent job with touch screen technology, then why can't these systems?
It's really fucking funny how Diebold can make touch-screen ATM machines that perform absolutely flawlessly and never lose a single cent, and yet their voting machines can't record a simple "candidate A/B" choice reliably.
Merely coincidence I'm sure.
I simply do not understand the persistence by election officials to use flawed voting methods whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, this is a GO/NO GO issue. ... you can run an election on paper if you just keep the polls a manageable size. So, there's no excuse for not having a fall back method to replace one that does not work.
Apparently with most State Election Officials it's a GO/GO issue with no asterisk, no qualifications, nothing. This just in
Maybe they should just contact the gaming industry ... they could whip up a few machines that could randomly select votes. At least then they would be contracting people with a proven track record of actually building a machine that does what it says it will.
Run 'em on TV in front of God And Everybody and declare a winner. It's essentially what's happening now, anyway.
Drift? Seriously?
You mean that kiosks in airports, malls, restaurants, hotels, atm machines that sit outdoors, my iPhone, my Windows Mobile phone, tablet PCs and god knows what else can be calibrated once and last for years, but these voting machines can't last for 8 hours?
Most traditional touch screens CAN'T drift. They need an initial calibration to align the location of touches to match the display to deal with manufacturing and assembly differences, but they don't actually drift, ever.
WHAT THE FUCK are they doing to get drift in the system? The $2 multitouch video on YouTube shows a system less likely to drift than this shit?
Someone needs to be hung. We need to start instituting criminal punishment for leaders of companies that produce crap like this. There is no accountability anymore because everyone hides behind 'the corp'. That shit needs to end now. We can either do it legally, or wait a little while longer and watch the public start taking the law into their own hands.
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Why is this so hard for people to understand?
You should vote with reliable, unmistakeable, dead simple technology. Best-case: permanent ink on paper. Everyone knows how to use a marker, everyone has seen a piece of paper with check boxes on it and knows what to do with the two. Anyone who is still muttering about receipts, ATM buttons, calibration, or whatever has missed the point.
Use the computers to do what they are very good at: counting votes. Lock the doors after the polls close and feed your ballots into an automated vote counter to get the results. If there's any kind of discrepancy, fine: pull the plug and count the friggin things by hand. Recounts? No problem. Just hang onto the ballots and you can recount till the cows come home.
This way, the chief returning officer for the poll is still responsible for the result (which I believe is kinda the law). Not some techy guy who "certifies" that the black-box system actually works, actually records, actually remembers, actually communicates upstream, is actually honest, etc. etc. etc. while all the election officials abdicate their responsibility and go home early.
Duh.
what makes you think they got their programmers from college?
Or are "school boards and city official" elections, to damn complicated for Americans to write an X in a few boxes?
The votes came back in Algeria today. The leader who has a vast amount of blood on his hands (Mugabe is nothing compared to him) that is facing open military rebellion in many areas collected more than 90% of the vote. That's a possible future if you continue to not have proper oversight over an electoral system.
The name of the town is "Salina", not "Saline" as is written. (Being a former Kansan, I can vouch for that!)
You shouldn't have to calibrate per use. My phone is a touch screen device and I use it all day. Since I've bought it over a year ago it never lost its calibration. I've never seen other touch-screen devices lose their calibration so quickly in other areas. Whether it be the software or hardware, something is faulty with these machines. How much do tax payers shell out for these pieces of shit? With that kind of cash floating around, and for something as important as voting, there shouldn't be stupid issues like this. Suggesting a calibrate per use is ignoring the root the problem.
So, have we found it more common for the calibration to drift to the right, or to the left ?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I was part of a team that did the setup for voting machines. As part of this setup we had to calibrate the touchscreen, it was just like an other touchscreen setup.
On a side note some of the screens had small red dots, where people who first tested the machine used an uncapped red pens on some of the screens to do the calibration.
For JPMorgan Chase banks,
I use their touchscreen ATM's at least once a week.
I have NEVER felt that they were nonresponsive, never have i felt that an item I did not select was selected.
So... Why is there a problem with these indoor limited use machines?
Also,
Why the hell do we need touch screen for voting?
Jesus, Grandma likes her old non-touchscreen cellphone anyway.
Beside that, my voting machines at home; St. Charles Parish, Louisiana work fantastic!
In fact, for high school government elections we use the same voting machines to teach future voters how to use them.
They always work.
A touchscreen - especially one on a voting machine - that supposedly needs re-calibrated every few users is pure bullshit. PURE bullshit.
I work in A/V control systems and deal with touchscreens every day. Some are used very heavily - not quite as much as a voting machine on voting day, but probably gets as many touches within a few days time. The need for re-calibration is rare; I'm talking once a year maybe? The worst touchscreen I've ever seen is a the wacom overlay on a Modbook (Macbook repackaged as a touchscreen tablet PC). That POS needs re-calibrated about... once a month. Add other's comments about all the touchscreen kiosks in airports, etc.; same f*ing technology, but they don't need recalibrated every 10 minutes.
There's just no way this isn't a case of either gross negligence / incompetence, or criminal vote rigging.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
... where the little X is drawn? The issue here is trust. Without a audit/paper trail, the machine could show the mark correctly and *still* register an "incorrect" vote. How hard is it to print a reciept? My ATM gives me a reciept. For f*ck's sake, the gas pump gives me a reciept (and if it's out of paper, it tells me to go to the cashier).
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Maybe we can compromise - a simple and cheap tech input device that's also reliable. Mouse/keyboard. Has no one considered this?
When did we decide that touch screens are easier? They aren't. They're a pain in the ass for everyone. Unless, maybe, you're an amputee, and you're depending on being able to touch the screen with your nubs, or if your arthritis prevents you from gripping a mouse. In those cases, maybe we should think about what we did in paper/pencil days (someone needs to help you, I'm guessing).
"Proverbs for Paranoids #3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." -- Thomas Pynchon
The capacitive technology is crap. It needs to be calibrated. It was intended to replace a mouse. It is WRONG.
In this application one can use contact-based touch screen technology. Very similar to what's in your keyboard. There is no drift. No calibration. Resolution is low, but who cares? You are not moving a cursor around on a screen, you are picking one of a small number of choices.
"Tuesday saw elections for school boards and city officials throughout Kansas. In Saline, ES&S voting machines . . .
Correction: "Saline" is the county. "Salina" is the town, the Salzburg of the plains, if you will.
Maybe this is an exceedingly small county, but if not I call BS on their claim that they calibrated them all the day before. I frequently work as an election worker. Because of this I get to witness first hand the logistical heavy lifting that goes into pulling off an election. It is far from easy. A typical single precinct voting location has 4-6 voting booths. Locations with multiple precincts might have 2 times that many. There are a few hundred precincts. So for a county that uses all touchscreen machines it would be reasonable to assume they have several hundred touchscreen machines, maybe over a thousand.
They are claiming that the day before, in addition to distributing the machines to the precincts and all of the other tasks, they booted up every one, and then ran it through the calibration routine? I don't buy it. I think they are in CYA mode. If they did really do it, I bet it was done by a volunteer who booted up 10 machines at a time then calibrated them all as fast as he could, and did a really lousy job.
At least in this case it appears to be a result of rampant incompetence. I am convinced that the Diebold machines are programed they way they to facilitate election theft.
-- QED
Anyone see the last election episode of the Simpsons. "6 votes McCain." "Hey, I only wanted one of those votes to be for McCain!"
I'm a psychologist (amongst other things).
I would not be the least bit surprised to find out that the "drift" always happens in favor of the candidate(s) (or their party) who were bought by the company that built the machine.
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Here in England we vote using paper and pens. The pens never need calibrating.
We don't understand why machines have any advantages at all. We never queue up to vote either.
I don't vaguely trust my vote to a piece of electronics. And I'm not a luddite, I'm a programmer.
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If we were smart enough, here's what we'd do:
1. Build open source election software and put it on Sourceforge
2. Build open source hardware and give dot-com-and-org presences for it, a la OpenMoko
3. Develop necessary and sufficient security for the system to meet our standards - lot of peer review available here
4. Develop a viable way for local election authorities to adopt it
Viable way to adopt:
This is going to require a lot of political savvy.
I do not think that we are smart enough. I don't think that I am.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
There is a deposition from a lawsuit stating that, IIRC, either the screens or the machines themselves were manufactured in --literally -- a sweatshop in the Philippines. There was excessive heat and moisture. IIRC, the only testing was a shake test; they shook each product and if they didn't hear any loose parts it passed the test.
Our nation is founded on the principle that "...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Both the sellers and the buyers of these touchscreens are attempting to use cheap crap for implementing that principle, i.e., determining the "consent of the governed". Those who allow this to happen should be deeply ashamed.
We had touchscreen systems from HP back when I worked for Nortel supporting their shop floor. These rugged little beasties worked 24x7 without any sort of "calibration", with only one terminal out of a couple hundred failing during the two years I supported the shop floor.
Mind you the "buttons" on the HP's were a lot smaller than the touch areas of a voting booth, so the HP's had to be more accurate.
Bottom line is that the voting machines are using a flawed touchscreen technology. Probably yet another case of over-engineering the solution to use the latest "cool" technology instead of something that was tried and tested.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Light pens are the correct solution for a voting application - the nature of the hardware prevents misalignment and has no need for calibration. A light pen would also be more intuitive to voters who are not experienced with computer technology. The negative aspects of light pens, such as having the pen dangling around, are not a significant problem in a voting application.
They're fine in the morning, but by afternoon they're starting to lose their calibration
How is it that my HTC phone's touch screen calibration remains dead-on for years of continuous use without a recalibration, yet their voting machine "drifts" over the course of a single day? Is simple touch screen technology not mature yet?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I witnessed my wife's attempts to vote for Kerry in precinct 1196, St Edwards Church, Palm Beach FL 33480. about 8am on Sequoia EDGE machines
She pushed Kerry at least 3 times, each time a Bush Vote displayed,
called me over and I suggested that she not push so hard on the
screen, and push DIRECTLY on the X for Kerry and it worked. the
summary at end stated a Kerry vote.
My machine gave no problems, We voted early, to go answer phones for
the Palm Beach county Democratic HQ.
During my stint, I answered 2 calls relating to VOTER COMPLAINTS:
"I Pushed the Kerry Button, and get a Bush Vote"
After the first one, I called Kerry Lawyer pool, and their response
was "seems to be happening everywhere","voter workers have a
procedure to take machine off line, and re-calibrate it". The 2nd
call, I told to relay the information to "demand a re-calibration".
After thinking about this problem, (with 40 years of Computer programming
experience), I thought about, how to debug the program, REQUIRING
RECALIBRATION enough to make it a STANDARD PROCEDURE. Then the though
came to me that it may not be a BUG, but a "DESIGN FEATURE" as we euphemistically call some in the trade.
If your touch-screen routine was designed to properly execute when pushed
lightly in the DESIGNATED SPOT, it would be certifiable. If it was
pushed, elsewhere or HARD enough, what would the program do?
Perhaps, skew to a "Preferred candidate"? Based on proximity to the
DESIGNATED SPOT, perhaps this was calculated on a Pixel basis, and maybe
the size of the finger/footprint. What happens when one pushes farther on
the Kerry name verses the shorter Bush name?
Is the touch-screen map hard coded in pixel ranges, or a bitmap, which
could be modified by a clock routine? Or some other routine, unrelated to
voting such as Windows scheduler?, or the touch interrupt.
I would feel better about this if:
1) PBC elections commissioner had not ruled the no
"outsider" can experiment with the machines, hardware, software,
procedures, because "they are proprietary", AND that "would void the
warranty".
2) I heard ANY (documented or anecdotal) Bush voter complain that her/his
vote was MYSTERIOUSLY changed to a Kerry vote.
3) The Sequoia machine was debugged to not require re-calibration, and
the re-calibration problem was ADEQUATELY explained in the new version
report.
My feeling is that all Bush needed was to get 1 or 2 or more CHANGED votes
from EACH of these machines, allowed by an inattentive voter neglecting to
verify the final summary page, due to time/inattention problems, or
frustratedly let the vote stand without complaining.
This might explain some of the exit poll/verified vote discrepancy.
PS: My Palm PDA only needs recalibration after a CRASH!
The town is Salina, not Saline. It is pronounced sa-LI-nu, not sa-LEE-nu.
Funny, but the self-checkout touchscreens at the supermarket seem to be able to make it through a full day, or more of use... wtf?
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Yeah, they should be wearing a condom!
Why don't we just remove the TOUCHSCREENS and make them like most ATMs that I see, where the button NEXT to the TEXT corresponds with the vote? When you click it, it'll highlight it, and then you have to CONFIRM YOUR VOTE. Also, why don't they just make the damned things COUNT votes. Just how in the HELL are they losing votes?!?!?!
Solution: Big plastic Fisher Price buttons instead
I'm sure at least half of the people here at the very least have not only the knowledge but the experience (and time!).
Why hasn't the open source community stepped up to the plate? - I'll tell you why - We're complacent. Sure we get on slashdot and whine and cry about all these injustices, but none of us really care *that much* because we figure it's going to get rigged anyway.
I think I saw one. ONE. Open source voting solution out there, but as far as I remember, it didn't have hardware specs, it was just software.
In my precinct nobody bothers to watch unless their particular candidate is way out on the fringe, you know who I mean. They try to be annoying cranks, and are usually not quite up on the routine, however we accommodate them as best we can. "Watch, but don't stand in the * * way! /No, you can't take our voter tally outside."
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I have a photocopier at work with a 4x5" touch screen interface, and it works perfectly every time, all the time. Remarkable, when you consider that there are tons of tightly-packed virtual buttons, each of which is usually a quarter inch tall.
Did no one detect the sarcasm? You're all a bunch of tools.
Get with the program people, these machines were built to fail. Don't even question it slightly. Don't say "oh you're being paranoid." Think about it. Is it even slightly possible that what nabsltd has said is off the mark? When is the last time you saw calibration drift at an ATM? Don't dismiss this.
The people smart enough to do this correctly knows it solves the wrong problem.
Toss out the machines. There are inherent benefits in needing more people in the collection and tallying process unless you're all corrupted.
The same benefit as one touted as a strength of F/OSS by the way.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Step 1) Hold Election
Step 2) Count Votes
Step 3) Who Won?
Step 4 - Republican) Goto Step 2
Step 4 - Democrat) The People Have Spoken
"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." (Josef Stalin)
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
We're sorry, the fingers you're voting with are too fat. Please use the special voting stylus, or contact your local voting official for assistance.
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