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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?

5 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 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.

    2. 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.

  2. 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.

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

    when we stop using computers to count votes.

    --
    vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.