What are they thinking giving every clerk everywhere root?
Well, I shouldn't have had root, but since the bootloader malfunctioned and booted the machine into Windows CE, I did.
What if it was a testing version, or something else uncertified by the state?
If it was such a version then it had no business being on the machines. Additionally, I knew the name of the executable because the person at our precinct who had fixed our machine told me (we started it up early enough that she was able to get through to tech support as the line had not jammed yet, so I trust the info)
And this is the sort of thing that can be horribly troublesome. People with poor eyesight are mostly (though not exclusively) the elderly--a group that are not known for their comfort (in general) with computers. And here they are with a blank screen.
This was an elderly person. I agree completely.
Even though it couldn't print the totals, you expect it to submit electronically the correct tally?
*I* expect it? It's not my job. Diebold is at fault here, not me. All a poll worker can do is send the machine back and make a note of the occurence in the report, which we did.
The worst part was that the voting stations give a total number of votes cast onscreen and a total on the printed tape, and on all of our machines but one, these did not match. They were all off by one vote.
How is this problem not very, very serious?
You're right. It is serious. I did not say that it was not serious. What I said (or at least what I meant) is that we did not get any crashing machines, malfunctions that put machines out of comission for the day, or other such operationally disruptive problems as were mentioned in the article. Let me rephrase: "We did not have as hard a time of it as the author of the article did."
Please don't attack me for problems with these machines. I did not build them; I was simply doing my best to make them work, and I can only hope that they did.
I believe that it was the right executable because I knew the name of the executable -- it was mentioned to me by the person at our precinct who had fixed our PCM. The reasons that I feel justify this action are: + The PCM is not a voting machine -- it just issues the access cards. And it did that just fine. The only accounting it does is to record when the poll opens and closes and how many ballots are issued. These things can be verified from our paper records anyway. + Since the PCM issues the cards the voters need to vote, the precinct cannot operate at all without it -- it is mission critical hardware. + This problem affected some 40% of the precincts in the county (or so I heard). The result was that the tech support line was jammed for hours. Voters were already leaving the precinct. If I had not brought the machine online, how many voters would have been turned away?
I was an assitant systems inspector. We had problems as well, but they were not as bad as the article describes.
Our PCM didn't boot into the software, but it was an easy fix -- someone else fixed it before I showed up. I actually ended up driving over to the next precinct over to rescue them -- they didn't have any teenagers working there so no one knew how to use a computer. I started poking around the root filesystem looking for a link to the executable. I noticed a directory called "autoexec" so I checked it out only to find that it contained neither the executable nor a link thereto. I finally found the actual location of the executable--it seemed to be on a datacard of some sort--and started it for them.
We had one voting maching give a blank page to someone when it was in large print high contrast mode, but we just hit next and it was fine.
The worst problem we had was this: At the end of the day we log into the machines with the admin access card and print a report of the vote totals. One of our machines failed to print -- it just cut off in the middle and wouldn't reprint (some paper trail, eh?). In fact, during the training session, I saw one machine print a line of gibberish when instructed to print. Maybe there's a buffer overflow in the print system somewhere. The worst part was that the voting stations give a total number of votes cast onscreen and a total on the printed tape, and on all of our machines but one, these did not match. They were all off by one vote. I got reports of the same behavior from other poll workers at different precincts. I cancelled one ballot that day, so that might explain the one machine with matching totals. Perhaps the total shown onscreen counts the admin login as a vote. At any rate, it's a stupid error.
So, that's my story. Now I just gotta wait for the government to send my check...
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And let me apologize for this terribly messy post. I'm a noob and I obviously haven't gotten the hang of the formatting yet.
What are they thinking giving every clerk everywhere root? Well, I shouldn't have had root, but since the bootloader malfunctioned and booted the machine into Windows CE, I did. What if it was a testing version, or something else uncertified by the state? If it was such a version then it had no business being on the machines. Additionally, I knew the name of the executable because the person at our precinct who had fixed our machine told me (we started it up early enough that she was able to get through to tech support as the line had not jammed yet, so I trust the info) And this is the sort of thing that can be horribly troublesome. People with poor eyesight are mostly (though not exclusively) the elderly--a group that are not known for their comfort (in general) with computers. And here they are with a blank screen. This was an elderly person. I agree completely. Even though it couldn't print the totals, you expect it to submit electronically the correct tally? *I* expect it? It's not my job. Diebold is at fault here, not me. All a poll worker can do is send the machine back and make a note of the occurence in the report, which we did. The worst part was that the voting stations give a total number of votes cast onscreen and a total on the printed tape, and on all of our machines but one, these did not match. They were all off by one vote. How is this problem not very, very serious? You're right. It is serious. I did not say that it was not serious. What I said (or at least what I meant) is that we did not get any crashing machines, malfunctions that put machines out of comission for the day, or other such operationally disruptive problems as were mentioned in the article. Let me rephrase: "We did not have as hard a time of it as the author of the article did." Please don't attack me for problems with these machines. I did not build them; I was simply doing my best to make them work, and I can only hope that they did.
I believe that it was the right executable because I knew the name of the executable -- it was mentioned to me by the person at our precinct who had fixed our PCM. The reasons that I feel justify this action are:
+ The PCM is not a voting machine -- it just issues the access cards. And it did that just fine. The only accounting it does is to record when the poll opens and closes and how many ballots are issued. These things can be verified from our paper records anyway.
+ Since the PCM issues the cards the voters need to vote, the precinct cannot operate at all without it -- it is mission critical hardware.
+ This problem affected some 40% of the precincts in the county (or so I heard). The result was that the tech support line was jammed for hours. Voters were already leaving the precinct. If I had not brought the machine online, how many voters would have been turned away?
I was an assitant systems inspector. We had problems as well, but they were not as bad as the article describes. Our PCM didn't boot into the software, but it was an easy fix -- someone else fixed it before I showed up. I actually ended up driving over to the next precinct over to rescue them -- they didn't have any teenagers working there so no one knew how to use a computer. I started poking around the root filesystem looking for a link to the executable. I noticed a directory called "autoexec" so I checked it out only to find that it contained neither the executable nor a link thereto. I finally found the actual location of the executable--it seemed to be on a datacard of some sort--and started it for them. We had one voting maching give a blank page to someone when it was in large print high contrast mode, but we just hit next and it was fine. The worst problem we had was this: At the end of the day we log into the machines with the admin access card and print a report of the vote totals. One of our machines failed to print -- it just cut off in the middle and wouldn't reprint (some paper trail, eh?). In fact, during the training session, I saw one machine print a line of gibberish when instructed to print. Maybe there's a buffer overflow in the print system somewhere. The worst part was that the voting stations give a total number of votes cast onscreen and a total on the printed tape, and on all of our machines but one, these did not match. They were all off by one vote. I got reports of the same behavior from other poll workers at different precincts. I cancelled one ballot that day, so that might explain the one machine with matching totals. Perhaps the total shown onscreen counts the admin login as a vote. At any rate, it's a stupid error. So, that's my story. Now I just gotta wait for the government to send my check...