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Software Bug Adds 5K Votes To Election

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the margin-of-error dept.

eldavojohn writes "You may be able to argue that a five-thousand-vote error is a small price to pay for a national election, but these errors are certainly inadmissible on a much smaller scale. According to the Rapid City Journal, a software glitch added 4,875 phantom ballots in a South Dakota election for a seat on the city council. It's not a hardware security problem this time; it's a software glitch. Although not unheard of in electronic voting, this bug was about to cause a runoff vote since the incumbent did not hold a high enough percentage of the vote. That is no longer the case after the numbers were corrected. Wired notes it's probably a complex bug as it is not just multiplying the vote count by two. Here's to hoping that AutoMark follows suit and releases the source code for others to scrutinize."

3 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How hard is it for a computer to do addition? by tangent3 · · Score: 5, Funny



    void vote(int candidate)
    {
       switch (candidate)
       {
          case GEORGE_BUSH:
             totalVotes[GEORGE_BUSH] ++;

          case AL_GORE:
             totalVotes[AL_GORE] ++;
             break;
       }
    }

  2. It's simple by Mad-Bassist · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someone forgot to clear the chad bit!

    --
    "The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis
  3. Re:How hard is it for a computer to do addition? by Cixelsiduous · · Score: 5, Funny

    eh...your first case statement is missing a break. As it currently stands, a vote for GEORGE_BUSH also adds a vote for AL_GORE. I dunno maybe you left it out on purpose to make a point? I guess the bigger question is: why do I care? The answer of course is because I have no friends.