Another Election, Another Slew of Voting Machine Glitches

An anonymous reader writes: As Election Day in the U.S. starts to wind down, reports from around the country highlight another round of technological failures at the polls. In Virginia, the machines are casting votes for the wrong candidates. In North Carolina, polling sites received the wrong set of thumb drives, delaying voters for hours. In Michigan, software glitches turned voters away in the early morning, including a city mayor. A county in Indiana saw five of its polling sites spend hours trying to get the machines to boot correctly. And in Connecticut, an as-yet-unspecified computer glitch caused a judge to keep the polls open for extra time. When are we going to get this right?

Comments

Marked Paper Ballots FTW

[Irate Engineer]

We'll "get it right" when we knock off the electronic BS and use what has been tested to work, marked paper ballots. It.Just.Works.

Re:Marked Paper Ballots FTW

[Z80a]

The eletronic machines would not have it if they used actual physical buttons.
They would not have this issue if the program was on a ROM chip.
Not a problem if the voting machines had a internal encrypted flash memory.
No glitch if used the two first on this list
And that could be solved by software as well.

But for some reason diebold think that they should do all this stupid flashy show instead of actually designing something actually reliable and safe.

Re:Marked Paper Ballots FTW

[riverat1]

Unlike the bits in computer memory optical scan ballots can be recounted by hand if necessary. The error rate may not be zero but for most elections it's low enough to be below the threshold that would change an election.

Re: Marked Paper Ballots FTW

[Peter Simpson]

There will always be errors. Paper ballots minimize them.

Re: Marked Paper Ballots FTW

[kenwd0elq]

Yeah, I guess having electronic voting machines AND working printers is an invitation to failure, especially when a few dozen Sharpie pens is ... what, fifty bucks?

I realize this is heresy, but even though I've been working with PCs on a daily basis for THIRTY YEARS, not everything needs to be computerized.

Re:Marked Paper Ballots FTW

[ClickOnThis]

The theory is sound. The theory [of] electronic voting is that it's "better" than paper. But the reality for both is different.

The reality is that paper is better than electronic, and always will be.

You raised the issue of ballot-box stuffing. AC pointed out that a paper system can be observed by candidate surrogates. How do you "observe" ballot-box stuffing if the system is electronic? The answer is simple: you can't.

Get rid of the electronic voting machines.

[riverat1]

Electronic voting machines are a solution looking for a problem. Good old paper ballots work just fine for elections and are easily recounted if necessary.

We'll Get This Right...

[linuxrocks123]

when we stop using computers to count votes.

Re:Use Bitcoin Blockchain technology..

[Irate Engineer]

But why put the voting mechanics into a computer that the average Joe doesn't understand enough to verify? What is the advantage? The least technically literate person eligible to cast a vote should be able to understand and verify the vote casting and counting technology. Everybody understands paper; the same cannot be said for Bitcoin blockchains.

Re:Use Bitcoin Blockchain technology..

[riverat1]

Exactly. I'm a computer professional and I don't trust computers for voting and counting votes. It's too easy to do stuff behind the veil of the interface that you have no idea is happening. Even if it's open source unless you personally vetted and loaded the software you have no idea if it's what you think it is or not.

Paper ballots and hand counting is something that anyone smart enough to mark a ballot can understand and it's easily scalable.

Re:Vote by mail.

[sociocapitalist]

Meh. I voted by mail a week ago. Got a paper ballot. Had lots of time to look up details on all the issues, including the judges, some obscure issues, and the people I'd never heard of.

Much better solution. No lines. No scheduling around work. Several weeks to study out everything.

I highly recommend it for everybody.

And how do you know that your vote was received and accurately counted?

I voted by mail against a certain president. Twice. Didn't make any difference and I had no way to know if my vote was even taken into account as there is no feedback mechanism.