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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."
This is also how it work for me. I always use the automark machine because I am interested in it. Last week when I did use it, the calibration was so far off that pressing one candidate would select a different one. I was so surprised I took a video of the process. It is online here http://shultzonline.com/vote/ The idea behind the automark is to help people who have a hard time voting with paper and pencil. These are the exact same people who would have a hard time telling that the wrong person was chosen. I don't worry about intentional vote rigging, as it is easy to detect a problem for most people when the ballot is printed, but I still expect that every vote should count properly.