I’ve said it before in previous posts we’ve had over the years about voting machines. ATMs and related are bulletproof. The software literally never crashes or connects you to someone else’s account or any number of other potential problems. Voting machines — generally made by companies who also make things like ATMs — are vastly simpler on every level. If they aren’t 100% secure and work perfectly, then it’s because they were designed to not do so.
More W.Va. voters say machines are switching votes
Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.
This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for “Barack Obama” kept flipping to “John McCain”.
In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing elections. Both county clerks said the problem is isolated.
[…]
Wood said some voters might not realize that touch-screen voting machines may take a few seconds to record their choices.“The reaction time [on the machines] may be different. And when you hit the screen a second time, it cancels your vote,” Wood said. “When you get in a hurry, if you go to fast and hit it again, you can cancel what you just did.
[…]
“My son Chris said, ‘Mom, I didn’t vote for the people who came up on that machine. I wanted to go back and vote again. I called the lady at the polls and she said it was my fault because of the way I was punching the buttons.”
“A few seconds” to record your vote? What are these built with, 8008 processors? Actually, given how simple voting machine software is, even those should be fast enough.
And all this assumes you’re allowed to vote after ‘the great purge of 2008.’
Be prepared for a lot more stories in the news like this.
UPDATE: LibertyLover in comment #5 gives one explanation why these machines take so long to register and a possible reason why the bad votes. In other words they went for a system that is inherently not designed for the average user.
We need Britain and/or France to send their military to oversee the US elections.
In the mean time, democrats should go for a paper ballot and if they see funky things happen, they should burn something down.
Of course. The GOP points fingers at Acorn’s issues while totally ignoring the theft of the justice department to manipulate voter turnout and the sick tactics being used to disenfranchise poor and minority voters.
Why not revert to plain ol’paper? It’s simple, can be used by everyone, can be checked by everyone, literate or illiterate, and is re countable.
Divide voting tables into smaller communities, and counting should be easier and faster.
Heck, even Brasil, with a large, sub educated population, and very remote areas, can have elections resorting to simple and hi tech techniques, and succeed at it. Why can’t USA?
I agree that if the machines do this they were designed that way. Evidently it is the only way Republicans can win elections anymore.
A few seconds” to record your vote? What are these built with, 8008 processors? Actually, given how simple voting machine software is, even those should be fast enough.
I work in the industrial automation sector and we use touch screens quite a bit for our HMIs. The problem described in this article isn’t a function of the processor but a function of the screen itself in conjunction with the serial adapter (or USB) and the software driver used to interface it.
When you touch your finger to the screen, sometimes it takes a couple of seconds for the screen to “notice” a finger is touching it.
Those screens aren’t like the ones on your iPhone. The are either capacitive or resistive. Both have advantages and both have disadvantages.
An advantage of both is low cost.
A disadvantage of both is speed (or lack thereof). Another is parallax error as the screens typically sit an inch or two above the actual monitor.
#5 said “When you touch your finger to the screen, sometimes it takes a couple of seconds for the screen to “notice” a finger is touching it.”
You failed to mention the “booger check” circuitry.
LibertyLover is pretty accurate in his HCI comments. This is poor technology for the task and shouldn’t be used.
In general, voters don’t use this type of technology in their day to day life (as opposed to a computer, microwave oven, remote for the TV, cell phone, etc). It would take several, or many, practice sessions for voters to use it effectively and accurately.
Heck, how expensive are these machines? I bet you could replace every single one of them with iPhones bolted to a desk, and have a cheaper, faster more reliable voting machine.
These so called “hi tech” systems always seemed over marketed crap.
I don’t recall this kind of a delay in any ATM or Self Checkout that I have used. Or better yet, how about the Credit/Debit card device that sits in every checkout lane in the country. Something’s fishy here.
I don’t know how reliable this relatively local paper is. However, with 55% of the voting machines in this country being machines that do not produce a paper trail, I find it more than a bit disconcerting that this is already beginning to be reported on a state with early voting. We’ll see if larger news organizations pick up the story. Having people observe that they vote for a Democrat and the machine switches it to the Republican does make it sound like vote tampering. I think that a West Virginia paper, a Republican leaning state according to Pollster, might report things very differently if there had been claims of this from both sides.
#1 – Dallas,
After 2000, in 2004 Castro offered to send observers to oversee our election process.
So let me see if I’ve got this right. Suspect voting machines, Republican conspiracy to steal an election. ACORN registering millions of fraudulent voters, good Americans trying to guarantee everyone’s right to vote….
#8…. bingo.
I agree. There are so many times the govt’ wastes millions on specialized hardware that cost many times what off-the-shelf does, and only works a fraction as well.
Last year the US Census Bureau blew $600 million developing specialized hand-held data collection units. They ended up throwing them away after they discovered that they don’t work.
When I read about it, I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t buy a bunch of iTouches or similar PDA’s and just install their own app. Then after the census, they could sell them to another nation, or wipe them and sell them on eBay.
I think it will be interesting who actually succeeds in steling the election. Diebold or ACORN.
#9, I know that the touchscreens used at my bank (BofA) still insist you use the metal buttons to the right of the screen. Every other function you can use your finger on the screen.
I don’t know what kind of touchscreens you are referring to in the checkout line. All the ones I’ve seen use real buttons. You got a picture?
#15, I meant they insist you use the metal buttons to put in your PIN.
Actually, people with cell phones should be able to vote using a text message.
Then they receive a confirmation SMS.
I’ve also worked with touch screens, for use in golf clubs. Capactive are more expensive, but cannot be easily broken, like with a pen/pencil.
The obvious choice would have been a box with four big buttons, and cardboard cut-outs that fit over the box, so that each big button is perfectly aligned.
However, OCR technology is so far advanced, it would be child’s play to simply scan paper ballads. When the machine can’t read, two humans have to accept.
The GOP is acting like the PRI of Mexico, or Hugo Chavez.
#7: I disagree. I fix retail POS and self checkouts, both use touchscreens. If you use the self checkout, you’ll notice when you touch buttons on them, they do work instantly. Even our older model capacitive and resistive worked “properly” and immediately when you touch them. Both interfaces work that way (RS232 or USB) as well. The software you use on your environment may be the cause of the delay in your case. The latest design touchscreen that is used is infrared, so if your hands or the screen are cold, then they would not work properly, but at room temperature, they do work properly. I agree with Uncle Dave’s assessment, someone has been tampering with the machine. It is possible to alter the calibration of the touchscreen to the advantage of one canidate, especially if the buttons on the touchscreen are all in the same place. Also, the driver has settings that can be altered to delay the “press” of said button, but in a world where everyone that uses a self checkout is used to the moment they touch on the screen it works immediately, why would you alter such settings? This smells very fishy.
Well, the stupid state legislatures chose electronic voting even while people in the know were setting off alarm bells about it all over the country and now many can’t afford to install what all of them should be using in the first place, a paper form marked with a #2 pencil fed into a machine that spits it back out if there is an error.
Dumb choices by governments inspired by crony capitalism, as usual.
Up here we have a fool proof voting system.
It’s called pen and paper.
First off, everyone who has looked into the ACORN issue has found nothing of substance. That story is an invention of the right wing media.
As for the touch screen issue, this crap needs to end! All we need to insure the integrity of the election is a law that requires two things:
1. All votes will be recorded on paper. Automated touch screens must be attached to printers so that voters can verify their vote was recorded properly.
2. One percent of all precincts, chosen at random after election day, must hand count the paper ballots of the top 3 races in those precincts and compare the hand count to the machine count. Discrepancies in the number of ballots, or in the vote totals must be publicly reported and investigated.
#3
The 2000 election showed how problematic paper can be. You would think punching a hole in a piece of paper would be pretty straightforward. Even using markers wasn’t 100%. Thus, even paper does not guarantee “re-countability” and then there is cost involved in handling and disposing of the paper and recounting if needed.
#11
What would you do with a paper trail? How do we validate claims that the machine recorded their vote incorrectly? People could just as easily vote for candidate A and later claim they really voted for candidate B and the machine recorded it wrong.
A paper trail does not really solve anything IMO. It simply provides a false sense of security.
If people did not have such a cow about the subject, one solution would be to tie your vote to your ID and then mail the person a special code (or let them get one in person). We should then let people change and review their vote right up until the voting deadline and allow them to do it online (or in person). Since it is tied to your ID, you couldn’t vote twice but could change your vote as many times as you wish until the deadline.
The mechanics of the machine IMO are less worrisome than the way the machine is storing the data and the computers used to tabulate the results. Even if the machine was easy to use and physically secured and even if you could verify with 100% confidence that what you entered is what the machine thinks you entered, how do we know that the computer that is tabulating the results is doing so correctly?
After a few weeks of threads like this (liberal fear), it’s become clear that liberals may not be able to comprehend victory.
This is setting up very well for a wasted two years during Obama’s first term, and a Republican return to power in Congress in 2010.
Repeat of ’92 to ’94. Put it on the board.
Do you think it is a coincidence that there have been no reports of votes being switched from Democrats to Republicans – ever??
If you answer yes, I have a bridge to sell you.
What if the whole Association of Comunity Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) get out the vote effort were so repugnant to Republicans because of the areas of cities targeted, that they (the Republicans) invented the whole registration fraud Big Lie?
Did the application via an ACORN-distributed voter registration form for Florida’s famous Mickey Mouse come from an ACORN official filling out the form, or was that a Yuk submitted by a kid / plant / Republican Dirty Tricks operative?
How impossible, implausible or non-Carl Rove could such a thing be?
I want someone to track a list of Big Lie political moves, reports, efforts and pronouncements that have come from both camps.
Damnnocrats and Repugnicans.
My guess is that the Reds are more like the Reds. (Republicans / Apparatchiks)
Every day millions of people use touch-screen based bank machines. And they seem to be able to get their money out.
How come people can’t put the same amount of time and effort into voting as they do getting $20 from an ATM ?
Why is voting considered such a huge ordeal that you have to get in and get out as fast as possible and can’t be bothered to wait 2 seconds to make sure your selection was recorded properly?
#24 – Jimbo
>>Repeat of ‘92 to ‘94. Put it on the board.
In ’96, Clinton won again. Just like Obama will do in 2012.
I agree with poster #1
Given the situation that arose in the 2000 elections, the USoA should be required to have an independant observer present to ensure that voting is not corrupted by faulty machines or ballot blocking. I suggest the UN appoint some people to this case.
We all know what allowing GWB into the whitehouse resulted in.
Yeah. Send in the U.N. troops now.
The Repubs will rig the elections just like they did 2 years ago to retain control of Congress…
Or, maybe not. Beware the boogy man.