ELECTION 2002 PRIMARY New machines hit snags in Tuesday tryouts
By MICHAEL PEARSON Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer machine Louie Favorite/AJC Touch-screen voting will be used statewide Nov. 5. Hall and Marion counties reported no problems with the system in their primaries.
Software problems and human error prevented some voters in Tuesday's primary from trying out Georgia's new touch-screen election system.
State officials promise the problems should be fixed before the statewide rollout in November. And they pointed out that the machines worked well in Hall and Marion counties, the only counties where real votes were recorded electronically on Tuesday.
In Fulton County, at least 11 percent of the touch-screen machines failed. Some froze up like balky home computers, while others got stuck in a mode that effectively locked up the machines, said Gloria Champion, the county's director of registrations and elections. No one was denied the right to vote because the machines were only being demonstrated for interested voters. The real votes were cast on punch cards.
Chris Riggall, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, attributed the problems to errors by poll workers, a glitch in the Windows operating system that runs the machines and problems with electronic cards that replace paper ballots and ballot boxes.
Riggall said an extensive training program for poll workers, a planned software upgrade and ample technical support on Election Day should hold problems to a minimum. The training and software upgrade already had occurred in Hall and Marion counties, where actual electronic voting was near- flawless.
"Certainly the best measure of the performance we expect was in the two counties where we were configured to actually hold an election," Riggall said.
Hall County elections chief Anne Phillips said she was thrilled with the system.
"We had a really good day," she said.
But Fulton County officials said they still worry there isn't time to ensure a smooth Election Day. Commissioner Bob Fulton, a Georgia Tech engineering professor, likened the planned November debut to the liftoff of an unproven rocket.
"Once it launches, you don't have many options," he said.
The state purchased 19,015 of the touch-screen machines in May to replace a patchwork of older systems and head off a repeat of the 2000 presidential election, in which old technologies complicated tabulation of an already close vote.
Each of the state's 2,823 voting precincts got one of the machines for voters to try out on Tuesday as part of the secretary of state office's ongoing voter education campaign.
The most common problem was untrained poll workers unintentionally starting the machines in "election mode" instead of "demonstration mode," Riggall said. The access cards needed to display ballots on the machines weren't programmed to work in election mode, and poll workers weren't equipped to override the strict controls placed on machines in that mode.
In Fulton, poll workers also reported the machines mysteriously switching from demonstration mode to election mode, Champion said. But state election officials and the company that makes the machines, Diebold Election Systems of Ohio, said that's virtually impossible and instead suggest untrained workers were to blame.
"It's very difficult to create a problem with it, but sometimes they do it," said Mark Radke, Diebold's director of the voting programs.
The only other reported problem, Riggall said, was power cords improperly attached to the machines.
Diebold officials say its machines have been used in elections in Maryland, Virginia, Indiana and California with few reported problems.
Just to make sure, the Ohio-based company will send 387 support employees to Georgia on Nov. 5, including one roving technical support worker for every 30 precincts. Poll workers will be trained after the Sept. 10 runoff elections and will also have the benefit of a toll-free support line for immediate help, Riggall said.
As the second release in the vast catalog of Global Underground DJ-mix albums, Nick Warren's Live in Prague ends up sounding a bit dated and inferior to the later volumes, which benefit from the late '90s explosion of trance records. A respectable DJ with a knack for mixing together tracks perfect for the dancefloor, Warren contributes a noble effort on this release, but it just doesn't reach the potential evident on his later Global Underground: Brazil album. First of all, his tracks just aren't that exciting here; a few standout as definite trance anthems ("Life on Mars") while most lack any noteworthy elements -- vocals, samples, melodies, snare-rolls, synth riffs, stomping rhythms -- suffering from a sort of bland homogeneity that relies on momentum to carry the listener from one similar progressive house track to the next. When the salient songs do enter the mix, it always seems like an awkward moment. Rather than slowly building his set from deep, dark progressive house through some surreal epic trance until finally peaking with two or three hands-in-the-air anthems as most DJs do, Warren instead scrambles this template, placing songs such as Energy 52's "Cafe del Mar" in the middle of the second set, which makes the rest of the album relatively anti-climatic. This isn't necessarily a terrible set by Warren, but it clearly pales in comparison to the many other excellent DJ-mixes on the many excellent succeeding Global Underground releases.
This post is not redundant, nor a troll. The link is to where the ACLU lets you join on-line. I think the ACLU does a great job, and I joined. All I had to do was click that link.
Slashdot Mirror
they should jam Virginia based snipers, too.
i like it
You, sir, are a terrorist.
IE sux
M$ blows
I won't use winblows on my b0xen
fuck micro$shaft
now, mod me up whores!
no
no comment
I've got Deep Dish in Moscow; it's great.
ELECTION 2002 PRIMARY
New machines hit snags in Tuesday tryouts
By MICHAEL PEARSON
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
machine
Louie Favorite/AJC
Touch-screen voting will be used statewide Nov. 5. Hall and Marion counties reported no problems with the system in their primaries.
Software problems and human error prevented some voters in Tuesday's primary from trying out Georgia's new touch-screen election system.
State officials promise the problems should be fixed before the statewide rollout in November. And they pointed out that the machines worked well in Hall and Marion counties, the only counties where real votes were recorded electronically on Tuesday.
In Fulton County, at least 11 percent of the touch-screen machines failed. Some froze up like balky home computers, while others got stuck in a mode that effectively locked up the machines, said Gloria Champion, the county's director of registrations and elections. No one was denied the right to vote because the machines were only being demonstrated for interested voters. The real votes were cast on punch cards.
Chris Riggall, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, attributed the problems to errors by poll workers, a glitch in the Windows operating system that runs the machines and problems with electronic cards that replace paper ballots and ballot boxes.
Riggall said an extensive training program for poll workers, a planned software upgrade and ample technical support on Election Day should hold problems to a minimum. The training and software upgrade already had occurred in Hall and Marion counties, where actual electronic voting was near- flawless.
"Certainly the best measure of the performance we expect was in the two counties where we were configured to actually hold an election," Riggall said.
Hall County elections chief Anne Phillips said she was thrilled with the system.
"We had a really good day," she said.
But Fulton County officials said they still worry there isn't time to ensure a smooth Election Day. Commissioner Bob Fulton, a Georgia Tech engineering professor, likened the planned November debut to the liftoff of an unproven rocket.
"Once it launches, you don't have many options," he said.
The state purchased 19,015 of the touch-screen machines in May to replace a patchwork of older systems and head off a repeat of the 2000 presidential election, in which old technologies complicated tabulation of an already close vote.
Each of the state's 2,823 voting precincts got one of the machines for voters to try out on Tuesday as part of the secretary of state office's ongoing voter education campaign.
The most common problem was untrained poll workers unintentionally starting the machines in "election mode" instead of "demonstration mode," Riggall said. The access cards needed to display ballots on the machines weren't programmed to work in election mode, and poll workers weren't equipped to override the strict controls placed on machines in that mode.
In Fulton, poll workers also reported the machines mysteriously switching from demonstration mode to election mode, Champion said. But state election officials and the company that makes the machines, Diebold Election Systems of Ohio, said that's virtually impossible and instead suggest untrained workers were to blame.
"It's very difficult to create a problem with it, but sometimes they do it," said Mark Radke, Diebold's director of the voting programs.
The only other reported problem, Riggall said, was power cords improperly attached to the machines.
Diebold officials say its machines have been used in elections in Maryland, Virginia, Indiana and California with few reported problems.
Just to make sure, the Ohio-based company will send 387 support employees to Georgia on Nov. 5, including one roving technical support worker for every 30 precincts. Poll workers will be trained after the Sept. 10 runoff elections and will also have the benefit of a toll-free support line for immediate help, Riggall said.
As the second release in the vast catalog of Global Underground DJ-mix albums, Nick Warren's Live in Prague ends up sounding a bit dated and inferior to the later volumes, which benefit from the late '90s explosion of trance records. A respectable DJ with a knack for mixing together tracks perfect for the dancefloor, Warren contributes a noble effort on this release, but it just doesn't reach the potential evident on his later Global Underground: Brazil album. First of all, his tracks just aren't that exciting here; a few standout as definite trance anthems ("Life on Mars") while most lack any noteworthy elements -- vocals, samples, melodies, snare-rolls, synth riffs, stomping rhythms -- suffering from a sort of bland homogeneity that relies on momentum to carry the listener from one similar progressive house track to the next. When the salient songs do enter the mix, it always seems like an awkward moment. Rather than slowly building his set from deep, dark progressive house through some surreal epic trance until finally peaking with two or three hands-in-the-air anthems as most DJs do, Warren instead scrambles this template, placing songs such as Energy 52's "Cafe del Mar" in the middle of the second set, which makes the rest of the album relatively anti-climatic. This isn't necessarily a terrible set by Warren, but it clearly pales in comparison to the many other excellent DJ-mixes on the many excellent succeeding Global Underground releases.
AND Bob Barr too. Rock on GA!
Prolly would have been more effective had you actually gotten first, though.
i got ya!
nothing. monkey man gave it away a couple of months ago. pity, that.
This post is not redundant, nor a troll. The link is to where the ACLU lets you join on-line. I think the ACLU does a great job, and I joined. All I had to do was click that link.
here
Linux sucks!
asx Blue Oyster Cultasx copyrightasx this is a description
That's what's here.
CLiT!
But this takes 50% of my posts for the next 24hrs.
It's so worth it.
Fuck the /. janitors.
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I agree with this post.
for da CLIT!