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Another Election, Another Slew of Voting Machine Glitches

Posted by Soulskill on from the another-vote-for-robot-nixon dept.

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?

21 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Marked Paper Ballots FTW by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:Marked Paper Ballots FTW by Z80a · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Marked Paper Ballots FTW by riverat1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Marked Paper Ballots FTW by hey! · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have voted in over twenty elections using optical scan, and there have never been any problems. If there were problems they can be fixed by a manual recount.

      As for the other problems you mention, they have nothing to do with paper vs. electronic. It's just bad organization.

      Here's how we do it where I vote. You walk into the polling place, and you tell the nice old lady your address, She looks up your address on a paper printout, and when she finds it you tell her your name and she crosses it off with a red pencil and hands you your ballot. You go into the voting booth, which is nothing but a curtained aluminum frame with a table in it; the table contains a stack of markers. You mark off your ballot, go to the exit desk where the address and name procedure is duplicated with another nice old lady. Then you drop your ballot into a dropped box under the watchful gaze of a policeman. When the polls close the printouts go into another locked box and it's all driven over to the counting center under police guard.

      There's literally nothing technological to screw up voting, counting or recounting, except that every polling place has to have a special machine for visually impaired voters. If that goes wrong the procedure is to bring a trusted person to fill out your ballot.

      --
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    4. Re: Marked Paper Ballots FTW by Peter+Simpson · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There will always be errors. Paper ballots minimize them.

    5. Re:Marked Paper Ballots FTW by Oligonicella · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What makes you think they aren't doing exactly what they planned on doing? All of your solutions require that the software not be malicious in the first place. Paper, black pen.

    6. Re: Marked Paper Ballots FTW by kenwd0elq · · Score: 5, Interesting

      AND, paper ballots allow one to recover from gross errors. Electronic ballots do not.

      The only kind of "electronic voting" that I would support would be one that allowed the voter to fill in his ballot on the computer terminal and then PRINT the ballot. The voter then reviews the PRINTED ballot, and then drops it into the ballot box. Immediate results, which is what the BigMediaMoguls want, to do breathless "breaking news" bulletins, AND a scanable paper ballot which would be the OFFICIAL ballot.

    7. Re: Marked Paper Ballots FTW by Le+Marteau · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've worked as an election judge in Colorado and in Pennsylvania and in both states I got paid between $100 and $150 a day for election day, and got paid for the training. It's not a bad way to spend a vacation day. Get paid for the vacation day, and the hundred and some bucks from the county, and get that vibe you get being a part of the democratic process. Plus, for places with electronic voting machines, it's good to have a technically oriented person there, because it is, after all, a computer and setting them up is usually not easy for non-techies.

      --
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    8. Re: Marked Paper Ballots FTW by kenwd0elq · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    9. Re:Marked Paper Ballots FTW by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  2. Feature by Livius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...not a bug.

    They've proven elections can be hopelessly unreliable and the electorate still won't care.

  3. Vote by mail. by Frobnicator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Vote by mail. by sociocapitalist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  4. Get rid of the electronic voting machines. by riverat1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. We'll Get This Right... by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    when we stop using computers to count votes.

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    vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
  6. Restating the obvious... by ndykman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re: When are we going to get this right? by rnturn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  8. Toronto does, and counts electronically by davecb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    davecb@spamcop.net
  9. Re:Use Bitcoin Blockchain technology.. by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --

    Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

    Vote for Bernie in 2016!

  10. I voted today using a real paper ballot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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".

  11. Re:Use Bitcoin Blockchain technology.. by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.