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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?
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.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
...not a bug.
They've proven elections can be hopelessly unreliable and the electorate still won't care.
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.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
As soon as you stop using easily exploited, "it's not hacking because it's just some spreadsheets on the desktop", vote-changing machines and switch back to paper, probably.
a system like Oregon's mail ballot.
Until we do an open federally sponsored voting system, no one is going to engineer a solution properly.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Every ballot creates a new Bitcoin address (polling locations keep track of the generated ballot addresses) with a negligible fraction of bitcoins.. Every vote sends a tiny fraction of bitcoin to whatever addresses are represented by candidates. Only transactions from ballot-list addresses are counted. Candidates with the highest amount of bitcoins in their voting addresses from verified ballots win. Any screwups or attempts at fucking with the votes could be seen on the blockchain.
There's probably 1000 different ways voting can be done anonymously while still being verifiable using the blockchain. Don't ask me to solve all the problems - but they are solvable.
I believe the whole point of the 'closed source' ballot bullshit we have now is the same reason we have a ridiculously bloated war on terror. The real purpose is to concentrate power in the hands of the few. They make us believe our votes are counted.. but they haven't been counted right in years.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
when we stop using computers to count votes.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Marked paper ballots. Done. Braille versions can be made for the blind, different language versions (what, voting based on a person's preferred language, that's just crazy) and so on. Optical scanning is old, tried and very well tested technology, and you can always fall back to hand counts.
Most likely when the electronic machines are sent to a recycling company -- Ireland recently dumped all theirs -- and paper ballots are used. The electronic machines have proven to be way too unreliable and easy to manipulate.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The ballots are counted when cast, and results reported in the hour after polls close. If there is anything suspicious, the paper is there for a judicial recount. And it's way cheaper than touchscreen PCs.
davecb@spamcop.net
How hard is it to make a voting program?
How easy would it be to "skew" results of said voting program one way, or the other? I'm not a conspiracy nutter, but it does make me wonder from time to time...
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
That won't be nearly enough to save you.
Computer related issues tend to be nasty enough when you are strongly motivated to get it right, face consequences if you don't, and have access to considerable talent.
A computer related issue where the customer mostly doesn't care, the harm of failure minimal, and the state of the market 'unmotivated at best, malicious at worst'? Even omniscience would have trouble under those circumstances, and those are basically the situation.
I voted today using a real paper ballot which I placed into a real ballot box in the state of TN. Very satisfying. Not easy to do however, the state wants to force voters to use electronic black box voting machines. The precinct worker and the local supervisor tried to tell me that I could not vote using a paper ballot. I told them I had checked with the state election division (which I had done) and an election attorney confirmed that my right to vote using a paper ballot would not be denied. They actually called the secretary of state office on election day to confirm.
It is not possible to verify a vote using an electronic black box voting machine. As Ronald Reagan said "Trust but verify".
Meanwhile:
http://abc7chicago.com/politic...
Quite ironic given the republicans argument for voter ID is democratic fraud. I wonder if anyone will go to prison?
btw, before anyone calls me a democrat, I hate both parties intensely.
What operating system do these Voting Machine run on?
We still use lever machines for school budget voting. They just work, they provide actual privacy, and they are simple to operate.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
The solution to all of societies problems:
1. Educate yourself.
2. Vote, and make your voice heard. Oh wait, shit.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Are you proposing a solution without thinking that there could be deliberate corruption?
When are we going to get this right?
The question mistakenly assumes that this is not exactly the intended effect.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Electronics have no place in something as crucial as a voting machine.
Come on Down Under, where we use the high tech method of paper and pencil. We did have an issue recently where a few votes were lost somewhere in outback Western Australia. The solution? The High Court decided to run that component of the election again. Easy, effective, safe and occasionally expensive.
That would be news in CT. It was a chain of human errors.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Roughly two months ago, we explored the question of whether Republicans were headed for a "wave" election victory in 2014. The results are in, and the verdict is unequivocal: Yes. As of this writing -- in the wee hours of the morning -- Republicans appear poised to win their largest House majority in well over half a century. They have won the United States Senate by a decisive margin, netting eight seats outright, with a ninth almost certainly on the way. They will actually gain a number of governorships -- building on their already-remarkable 30-20 advantage. And they've expanded their dominance of state-level legislative chambers. A comprehensive blowout. There are many things for conservatives to celebrate. An incomplete list, in no particular order:
(1) Senators-elect Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, and Thom Tillis are all winners of formerly-blue seats in states carried by Barack Obama at least once. Gardner tossed a perfect game in his race, beating Sen. Mark "Uterus" Udall soundly (by six points, with 89 percent of the vote counted). He neutralized the "war on women" nonsense and outperformed among Latinos. The national party should turn Gardner's win into a case study. Joni Ernst dominated Bruce Braley, winning by eight points. Adding insult to injury, Democrats also lost Braley's House seat. These 'precriminations' told the story. And Thom Tillis, who trailed in the polling average for the entire race, came from behind and ousted Kay Hagan.
(2) The last time Republicans defeated more than two incumbent Democratic Senators in one election cycle was 1980. In 2014, they've gotten four (Pryor, Udall, Hagan, Begich), with a fifth -- Mary Landrieu -- looking like a sitting duck. Landrieu garnered just 42 percent of the vote in Louisiana, compared to 55 percent for her two GOP rivals. She will need a miracle to win the December 6 runoff.
(3) The polls were, in fact, skewed. Toward Democrats. Significantly. Mitch McConnell won by 15 points in Kentucky. David Perdue beat Michelle Nunn by 13 points, easily avoiding a run-off. Tom Cotton absolutely destroyed Mark Pryor. Tillis wasn't supposed to win. The polls were way off in all of these races. And, I'm happy to add, the disgusting race-baiting failed.
(4) If the GOP takes Louisiana as expected, and if Maine independent Angus King decides to caucus with Republicans -- which he's reportedly open to doing -- the party will control 55 seats in January. Republicans were at a 60-40 disadvantage in the upper chamber as recently as early 2010. That's a breathtaking turnaround, mirroring Democrats' Senate gains from 2004 to 2008. Question: Might Sen. Joe Manchin be thinking about pulling a Jim Jeffords and switching parties, given what just happened in his state? That would be 56.
(5) Democrats insisted that Obamacare was not a big issue in this campaign. Republicans' campaigns blew that theory out of the waterand then there's this (a tally that doesn't include Begich or Landrieu):
almost half! MT @mkhammer: Damn. RT @philipaklein: w/ Hagan’s loss: 27 senators who voted for Obamacare won't be part of new Senate — Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 5, 2014
(6) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has now beaten the Left three times in four years. And each win has built on the last. He beat Mary Burke by nearly seven points in a race that was supposedly "tied" two weeks ago. The Marquette poll nailed it again. Walker has been rewarded by voters for his courageous and successful governance in a state that hasn't been carried by a Republican presidential ticket in decades. And this perspective is just delicious:
So Charlie Crist lost as many races as Scott Walker won in the last four years. — Daniel Ehlers (@DanielEhlers) November 5, 2014
Three Crist losses, with three different parties. Good riddance.
(7
MSNBC will of course cry that their loss was because of voting machine racism.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/2004votefraud_ohio.html
After seeing Ohio in 2004, I do not trust these are all or if any are glitches. This is serious and people need to start being investigated and prosecuted.
When are we going to get this right?
Never, because you insist on solving a problem that's not technical with technology.
Counting paper ballot votes manually is not difficult, and almost all of the civilized world does it, because they understand that adding complexity to the process does little in solving the challenges involved, but it does add a lot of potential failures.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Not quite.
We'll get it right when we stop using shit voting machine companies that happen to do a shit job. It's not like diebold was ever known for quality at any time in their existence, for example.
the fact that 400,000 ballots were found next to the boiler in the courthouse has absolutely nothing to do with my finding $1 million on the seat of my official government car.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Why not, it's as meaningful either way.
"When are we going to get this right?".
When we stop allowing poorly tested/buggy software out and think its ok to fix it later. We should be demanding excellence in our software company's and everything in between. Not its ok enough well fix it later.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Gerrymandering is the much bigger problem
New things are always on the horizon
How does this idea sound? When you arrive at the voting place, a person checks your identification and makes sure you are at the correct voting place and you haven't already voted. For each contest on the ballot, there is a line of turnstiles you can pass through, one for each contestant (or yes/no/abstain for ballot measures). Once you make your first vote, there is another line of turnstiles for the next contest/ballot measure. This could be behind curtains to keep it almost 100% anonymous other than the person or people watching you to make sure you don't turn any turnstiles more than once. At the end of the day, the MECHANICAL turnstiles' counters are read.
Amazing. One explanation of a picture and you come to the amazing insight that I don't like it when 'brown people' vote. I recommend you start working on solving mysterious murders. They might get pissed about the 0% clear rate though.
I encountered the video online somewhere where they were 'OMFG BALLOT BOX STUFFING!!!'. I reasoned that the only ballot box that would be that unsecured would be an absentee one, and finding the comments about unsealed envelopes pretty much confirms it.
I DO have some concern that he, or associates of his, might of collected up a number of unfilled absentee ballots and voted multiple times that way(serious felony), especially considering the reported unsealed envelopes(violating privacy of voting), and that he refused to give his name or explain what he was doing ('Turning in the ballots I collected from the residents of an apartment/hospital/rest home/etc....'). But I believe the latter is more likely than the felony. Besides,
I don't read AC A human right
Throw all these machines into the recycling bucket and go back to what works: pen and paper! Yes, counting might take a bit longer, but I rather wait an hour or more on results than have these effen machines eff things up. C'mon, the US boasts itself as the largest democracy and we can't even get the most fundamental thing right? Then again, the de facto two party system is only marginally better than the one party systems in China or North Korea.