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

a number af factual errors in the original article

[joris.w]

for a more accurate account of the facts, you could read http://datanews.knack.be/ict/n... (in dutch)
the vote counting problem in Flanders was related to manual procedures in the Ghent area
the DOS based e-voting system is used in Brussels, not Flanders
as stated already in other comments: the DOS based systems did not fail, it was the central vote collecting system that failed
lesson learned: If you want accurate reports, go to the source and don't rely on second hand reports