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."

Comments

a new low for /.

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:a new low for /.

[conureman]

It's a part time gig, take a day off your regular job and serve the community. Old school shit.

Calibrate Per Use?

[hal2814]

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)?

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. A system with a touch in the top left corner, bottom right corner, then the center of the screen would add only a very small amount of time.

After calibrated, the machine could show 4 lists of 4 items, and have the user select 1 highlighted element on each of the 4 lists to ensure that the calibration was correct. If they could not select the 4 items, a light could go off on the station to alert poller assistants.

I'm as frustrated as you are, hal. This is the type of thing that would come up in even the most basic systems testing. Even some of the worst programmers that I went to college with would have made sure that the system was calibrated properly.

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[TheRaven64]

Or, for a more reliable solution, do the same thing they do with cash machines and, rather than using a touch screen, put a row of buttons next to the screen and get users to push the button next to the candidate's name.

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[TapeCutter]

Or, for an even more reliable solution; The pencil.

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[getuid()]

Even if it wouldn't be too hard, it's not how it's "supposed to" work.

A person is supposed to go into the booth and vote, not start to hack on workarounds for obviously faulty hardware design. To bring in the car analogy: it's like having electrically adjustable car lights, and having to re-set them every time you turn them on because they wouldn't remember their position when turned off, or simply "drifted" during you drive.

Besides: even if you and I and most Palm users are able to perform such (granted, relatively simple) tasks as calibrating a touch screen, not everybody is (think: grandma). And while one may argue whether this is good or not, one cannot argue about one thing: the constitution gives *everyone* above a certain age the right to vote, not only to those who can calibrate touch-screens.

And: while it was your *choice* to own a palm, it was not everybody's choice to vote electronically. It is (was?) imposed on us. So if somebody is making me vote electronically, they at least ought make sure the damn technology fsck'ing works. It's not like it's rocket science, and it's not like there wouldn't be easy ways to make it work reliably -- worst case, for example by using regular buttons left and right of the screens instead of touch screens (think ATMs of most banks).

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[TheRaven64]

I'd favour that solution for an entirely different reason: The average voter understands pencils. Trust is a vital part of the election process, and having it depend on something that, to the average voter, is effectively magic is not a good idea because it undermines trust in the electoral process. Even if the machine is 100% reliable, only a small subset of the electorate are capable of verifying this, the rest are required to trust these people.

Whenever I suggest this, however, I am told that elections in the USA are too complicated for paper and they have to use machines or they would never be able to count the results.

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[Morlark]

Why should anybody be incapable of calibrating a touchscreen? I honestly cannot think of a single situation in which that would occur (barring actual physical disability that would prevent a person from using the machine entirely). I think you're underestimating poor grandma if you think she's incapable of pressing a button on a touchscreen. In fact, why should a person even need to know that they are doing a calibration at all? Why not just have "Press here to begin casting your vote" with a nice obvious red button, and then a few other simple inane comments requiring the user press a button to continue? Job done.

Saying that, I actually agree with you that a voter shouldn't have to go to the trouble of doing a calibration to work around the machine's faults. But arguing that such a calibration would somehow be discriminatory is an utter nonsense to my way of thinking. Anybody who is capable of using a touchscreen machine to vote is equally capable of calibrating it. As the GP poster said, you just touch three places on the screen and you're good to go.

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[Mr_Perl]

Unfortunately you'll get the same screen alignment problems with the cash machine approach. I've seen many cash machines where the screen text was not aligned with the buttons, creating an ambiguity about which one you touch. You can count from the bottom most of the time to figure it out, but some voters will inevitably miss that logical step.

Paper is still the best choice.

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[blindseer]

Careful - keep it up and the feds will appoint an "Election Czar". Or maybe the UN will send "observers".

I would welcome UN observers. It might clean up some of this nonsense we are having with our elections in recent years. Besides, how can we as a nation demand observers for other countries elections and get all upset when they demand observers on our elections? A bit of a double standard I think.

Re:Calibrate Per Use?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I can't believe people here think this is a good idea. You will need to explain to so many people just what the hell it is they are doing and why they must do it, because it will be far, far from intuitive. They will come off with the impression that the whole system is a complete hack... Perhaps you're on to something after all.

hard, or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:hard, or what?

[the_arrow]

Or:
  3. Both of the above

Not really

[aepervius]

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.

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

:The old adage probablym hold : Never attribute to malice what can adequately explained by idiocy and/or greed.

Election fraud isent malice, it plain greed. GP is right, no one could design today surch a bad system. This is election fraud.

~Bob

No time for a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

What the fuck kind of excuse is that?

[BitZtream]

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.

Electronic vote COUNTING

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

You Shouldn't Have to Calibrate Per Use

[Kneo24]

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.

Re:Unless this was the intented behavior...

[Smallpond]

Touch screens ARE analog devices and depending on technology may have to be calibrated. I'm sure that for a competitive bid situation they use the cheapest technology they can get away with. Does anyone know what ES&S are using?

Does it really matter ...

[fahrbot-bot]

... 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).

Re:Does it really matter ...

[Tokerat]

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.

If the issue is trust, what is to stop the machine from showing you a fake X *AND* printing you a fake receipt? With a fake bar code that scans for the wrong candidate (even thought it doesn't appear that way) during a recount?

It's not the technology that is untrustworthy:

[memorycardfull]

It's the people that create it. It is not technically difficult to tabulate millions of responses accurately so long as it remains an exercise in simply counting things. The complicating factor is that the results serve to distribute vast amounts of money and power which creates motivation for fraud that undermines that simple process. We should have no illusions about the accuracy of the tabulation process until there is open source code, paper audit logs and the opportunity for the public to examine these records for signs of fraud. Perhaps as an additional safeguard statistical comparison with exit polls should be required by law and any significant deviation should trigger an investigation of the process for possible tampering. These technical issues are only symptoms of the real problem.

"Proverbs for Paranoids #3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." -- Thomas Pynchon

Using the wrong touch screen technology

[FranTaylor]

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.

Re:Call themselves engineers....

[barzok]

His point being why is calibration necessary at all if there are touch-screen setups put in bars that work for years without any recalibration needed over the unit's lifespan.

Re:'Drift' sounds like a rubbish excuse

[smchris]

Don't know about ESS but I understand a lot of these machines have been Windows 2000 and Access. Why assume they went to any more trouble junking the hardware together? Just another example of the private sector making a Holy profit, you know.

My greater interest is statistical. How much "drifting" has been for the incumbent in recent years and what are the odds it was chance?