Voting Machines Selecting Default Candidates

overThruster writes "Some voters in Las Vegas have noticed that Democrat Harry Reid's name is checked by default on their electronic voting machines. By way of explanation, the Clark County Registrar says that when voters choose English instead of Spanish, Reid's Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, has her name checked by default."

Comments

Holy crooked election Batman!

[LWATCDR]

Actually if one reads the link you will see that Slashdot is at it again.
They are touch screen systems. If you keep your finger on them to long you end up with double picking.
This is a coding error. They just need to change the select from touch begin to touch end and maybe add a next button to take you to the next screen.
In other words it is a UI error and not some great evil conspiracy.

Okay Slashdot please stop using the FOX News and the Daily Workers guide to ethical journalism when writing the summaries!

Re:Explanation?

[Gravitron 5000]

The article implies that it's due to people keeping their finger on the touchscreen when they select a language preference. The location of Harry would be in the same screen location as English, where Sally would be in the same screen location as Spanish. Really, it's just sloppy coding, as you should wait until the user's finger is lifted before allowing another selection.

Re:Explanation?

[LWATCDR]

Well if you read the link and not Slashdot's terrible, slanted, and sensationalist summary you will see that wasn't said.
The problem is a simple UI issue.
From reading the article it seems that they implemented the select language touch as select on touch begin and not select on touch end.
So if you hold your finger down long enough the next screen pops up and your finger will be on one of the candidates.
It is a simple UI issue combined with people being on auto pilot. Honestly not a huge issue because you should really check it before you hit next anyway but it should be fixed.

Not evil or a conspiracy or anything but a UI error that really isn't that terrible if people bother to read. And yes it is so the type of UI problem that I would expect in any program like this.

Re:I abstain

[bonkeydcow]

I am an election judge, I would be happy to provide the number of spoiled ballots. In my last election, there were 3. They were the results of either stray marks where the voter rested their pen in a box before checking a different box, and the machine wasn't sure which they meant, so they got a new ballot. The other case was where there were multiple candidates for 1 race (more than 2 candidates) and the voter chose more than one. If you would like I will post again next week with the spoiled ballot count for this election. We have to keep track of every single ballot, so knowing the number of spoiled ballots is trivial.

Re:I abstain

[molo]

A person can be born in the US and raised and educated speaking a non-english language.

BTW, in some jurisdictions, you can register to vote in local elections just by being a resident. I'm not sure if Nevada has any jurisdictions like that however.

-molo

Re:I abstain

[snkline]

The US does not have an official language at the Federal level. If a state only wants to issue ballots in English, I believe they can, but they are also allowed to issue them in other languages if they want to. If Nevada wanted to they could provide you with options for every single written language in the world.

you don't always have to be a citizen to vote

[cwgmpls]

Voting requirements are typically established by local and state government, not by the Feds. I assume small-government types would like it that way. Historically, non-citizens have been able to vote in local, state and federal elections in over 40 states and territories. It is more recent, anti-immigrant sentiment that has started to restrict voting to citizens only.

Historically, voting has been considered a right of anyone who pays taxes. "No taxation without representation!" was the rally cry of the original Tea Party. The current "tea party" seems to have an altogether different agenda.

There are tens of millions of workers in the U.S. who are not citizens but pay taxes. According to the principles of the founders the U.S., their payment of taxes entitles them to vote.

Re:I abstain

[DavidTC]

Actually, it is 'progressive'. A major aim of the Progressive Era was election reform. Without that, there'd be no recall or ballot initiative laws, and party bosses would still pick candidates instead of having primaries, and, of course, the seventeenth amendment directly electing Senators and the nineteenth allow women to vote.

While I can't think of any specific 'let non-citizens vote' concept (I suspect the Progressives would actually push for immigration reform instead.), it's not incredibly off-kilter from the rest of the stuff. I mean, they demanded letting all citizens vote. (People tend to get confused. Women were always citizens. It's just there's no requirement that all citizens be allowed to vote.)