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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."
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.
Two possibilities:
Take your pick
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.
@49 years of age, I'm still one of the youngest poll workers around my area, as I've been for the past 20 or so years I've been doing it. Kids nowadays, they just aren't interested in working 14 hours straight with a half-hour break, for less than a C-note. sheesh.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I live in Minnesota. Even pencils didn't save us from court appointed observers. Our Senate election is still up in the air.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
I would bet $0.15 that the machines are being incorrectly calibrated.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I used the ES&S automark this past week. The calibration was so far off that I got the vote flipping talked about. I was so alarmed that I took a video with my cell phone. You can see it here. http://shultzonline.com/vote/ I was so upset that I talked to the election officials, and went to the clerks office a few days latter. More or less I found out that all these machines are pieces of crap. A simple solution would have been to add a little space between the names (like they do on ATM machines) so that a small miss calibration would not have been such a serious deal.
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!
ALMOST believe the conspiracy?
Geez, what the hell more do you need? A video tape of Diebold executives laughing evilly while cashing cheques?
I don't know how it works where you are, but in the UK anyone can watch the vote counters. If you don't trust them, then you can watch the box your vote goes in, you can watch it being opened, and you can watch every vote in that box being counted. Most people don't, but they know that the people who do don't need any special knowledge that they don't have, so they can trust these people to do their job correctly.
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Changes in the environment like temperature can result in variation in the output from the touchscreen.
I have personally used hundreds of different outdoor ATMs with touchscreens. I'm sure there are millions of other people that also use them. Not once have I ever had a significant problem selecting the button I wanted, as long as the touchscreen worked at all. I have also never heard anyone else complaining about touching "Withdrawl" and getting "Deposit" (or similar completely wrong button selection).
I'm also pretty sure that these machines are not calibrated every day. But, even if they were, it really doesn't matter, because the voting machines are calibrated every day.
So, why is it millions of ATMs can work just fine with maybe 1-2% having problems, yet putting what should be the exact same touchscreen on a voting machine causes the error rate to jump an order of magnitude (at least)?