Bug In DOS-Based Voting Machines Disrupts Belgian Election

jfruh (300774) writes "In 20 cantons in Belgium's Flanders region, voting machines are x86 PCs from the DOS era, with two serial ports, a parallel port, a paltry 1 megabyte of RAM and a 3.5-inch disk drive used to load the voting software from a bootable DOS disk. A software bug in those machines is slowing the release of the results from yesterday's election, in which voters chose members of the regional, national, and European parliaments. The remaining voting machines, which are Linux-based, are unaffected, as were voters in the French-speaking Wallonia region of the country, most of whom use paper ballots."

Comments

They almost made it, too

[Anonymous Coward]

They were just about to upgrade to Windows XP for the next election.

C:\DOS

[barlevg]

c:\dos

c:\dos\run

run\dos\get convicted for election fraud

Obligatory

[ArcadeMan]

Stupid Flanders.

Re:It's a software bug, hardware unrelated

[Hsien-Ko]

I guess their next 'logical' step is to upgrade to Windows XP


and then use the same software in the DOSBox emulator

and then complain on the DOSBox forum that it doesn't work, among the sea of other overentitled 'IT pros' that demand a gaming emulator to fit critical application usage
*facepalm*

Dos, Memory?

[Tablizer]

a paltry 1 megabyte of RAM...

640 votes ought to be enough for anyone. -B. Gates

Re:It's a software bug, hardware unrelated

[TheGratefulNet]

If the DOS machines are meeting the specifications required for Flanders elections, there's not much of a reason to upgrade them.

do I have to say it?

alright then:

"stupid flanders!"