Overheated Voting Machine Cast Its Own Votes

longacre writes in with the results of a report on voting machines that malfunctioned in NY during the 2010 mid-term elections. "Tests of a number of electronic voting machines that recorded shockingly high numbers of extra votes in the 2010 election show that overheating may have caused upwards of 30 percent of votes in some South Bronx voting precincts to go uncounted. WNYC first reported on the issue in December 2011, when it was found that tens of thousands of votes in the 2010 elections went uncounted because electronic voting machines counted more than one vote in a race. A review by the state Board of Election and the electronic voting machines’ manufacturer ES&S found that these 'over votes,' as they’re called, were due to a machine error. In the report issued by ES&S, when the machine used in the South Bronx overheated, ballots run during a test began coming back with errors."

Comments

OK Enough of this SHIT

[SlippyToad]

Paper and pen ballots.

ONLY.

And while we are at it, let's fix Voter Fraud with one simple tool: a freaking indelible inkwell at the desk where you pick up your ballot. That way, once you've picked up ONE ballot, you cast your ONE vote. People with purple fingers cannot pick up ballots.

Then we can toss all of this disenfranchising "voter ID" crap on the ashpile too. Our elections will guarantee that each person votes just once and every fucking vote is counted. No swinging chads. No overheating vote-generating machines (oh, and does that story smell like ripe bullshit to me -- yes it does!)?

Paper trail. Physically impossible to vote more than once..

Done.

Re:Scrap them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just change the machines? Brazil uses them for more than a decade, without any big problems.

Either that or Brazil isn't as good at discovering there were problems after an election.

And before you get offended, I'm Brazilian. I'm also an electrical engineer and software developer, which means I don't trust voting machines, at least not voting machines without a paper receipt to be used for recounts. Which I know the Brazilian machines do not have.

Re:Scrap them all

[yakatz]

Except when slot machines are hacked, the developers usually keep it a secret so the casinos will not be investigated. (Mitnick, K (2005). The Art of Intrusion.)

Oh wait, the voting machine companies probably try to do that too.

One More Thing:

[SlippyToad]

Move Voting Day to Saturday. The only reason it was on Tuesday was to allow for travel time and to avoid the often-strictly observed Sabbath of the still quite Puritan colonial USA. Make it a Saturday, and make all businesses except essential service and emergency personnel close on that day period, so the people can take their time to vote.

There. That's the last one.

Re:Scrap them all

[Daniel Dvorkin]

ATMs are incredibly reliable these days. The fact that these POS voting machines are built, in large part, by the same people who build ATMs indicates strongly that Occam's Razor beats Hanlon's (or Napoleon's) Razor here; malice, rather than stupidity or incompetence, is the simplest and most likely explanation.

It was voting fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

It shows a cluster of voids in MULTIPLE voting cells in one area. That means

1) it was not random.
2) Multiple machines in multiple buildings all voided?? No, not overheating, you might pretend that this particular part of NY is hot,but different building have different heat characteristics.

That map is a clear voting fraud pattern, it suggests local tampering.

Get the Choicepoint data

[Anonymous Coward]

Added comment: Get the Choicepoint data, I bet it shows that section of New York votes strongly Democrat or strongly Republican, and it means that someone was trying to change the election by removing that cluster of votes.

Then go subpoena Choicepoint to find out who commissioned political affiliation data for those districts, and start prosecuting these voter frauds.

Re:Scrap them all

[MightyMartian]

Actually, in Canada, if you can demonstrate that the irregularities were high enough to have brought an election result into question a judge can order the election results vacated and a new election runs. I'd like to think that if 30% of the votes were lost that the *independent* (there's a keyword right there) election commission would go to a judge and ask exactly that, that the election results be vacated and a new election called. And Canada may find out soon, as evidence of robocall interference may call the results of at least a few ridings into question, which means even if it ends up being a year or more since the election, those results can be discarded and a new election fought.

Re:Scrap them all

[AK Marc]

Have you never been to a magician's stage show? He gets 500 people to all look at the wrong thing at the same time with close to 100% accuracy. And you are claiming that a well timed car backfire won't make people look. Really? Really? All it takes for voter fraud to be easy is for stupid people to think they have a fool proof system, when they are the ones that are the fools.