More Voting Shenanigans in Florida 680
stewwy writes "It looks like the the shenanigans have started already, the Register is running a story about the difficulty early voters are having with casting votes for Democrats." From the article: "The touch-screen gizmos seem strangely attracted to Republican candidates. One voter needed assistance from an election official, and even then, needed three tries to convince the machine that he wanted to vote for Democrat Jim Davis in the gubernatorial race, not his Republican opponent Charlie Crist."
Excellent! (Score:2, Funny)
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I'm going to fix an election. (Score:5, Insightful)
Should I a) let the voter choose whatever he or she wants, and then assign all the votes to my candidate? or b) randomly have the machine reassign input to choose my candidate, giving them a chance to verify and correct their vote?
I just don't know...this is such a tough decision...I must not be cut out for this election stealing business.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)
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Original News Story (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's right. It's the conspiracy theorists that are responsible for the complete polarization and "fuckup" of politics these days. You keep on believing that. Sounds almost like a conspiracy in itself. (And that's ignoring the fact that you're the only person who's descended into pathetic name-calling and ranting, yet you feel justified in calling other people children).
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Another angry Dem
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According to the study, it does. Another recent study done shows that mid-term election coverage in the media, again, heavily favors the Democrats. The New York Times recently endorsed Democrats across the board for the first time in its history--no Republicans at all.
No, I didn't.
Screens slipping out of synch (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this similar to the electronic credit card signature systems that display my signature half an inch below where I put the stylus?
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A "better box" would be a LCD screen with a seperate button panel along the bottom of the display. That way the input is discrete.
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I'd have thought the obvious solution would be recalibrating the screen, not rewriting the software...
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Yes, yes, yes! (Score:2)
The tactile feedback thing is important. I operate ATMs much more quickly and confidently when the buttons have a nice keyboard-like "click" feeling to them. The ones with those cheap non-reliefed buttons that barely push in suck, and often make lo
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I work in a factory that utilizes several touchscreens of various types, makes, and models for the user interface on the equipment, these screens are subjected to 24x7x365 operation and sustain heavy abuse from pens, excessive physical pressure, and exposure to acid and solvent residues, they do not continuously slip out of sync. Once they are calibrated recalibration is very rare, perhaps once or twice every couple of year
If they are smart enough to hack voting machines.. (Score:2)
Re:If they are smart enough to hack voting machine (Score:2)
Re:If they are smart enough to hack voting machine (Score:2)
Across the board (Score:2)
I haven't used the new touch screen voting machines, but if you went Democrat "across the board", isn't that a single check box? I seem to remember paper ballots just having one box to strike if you wanted to vote a single party for the entire ballot. How would so called screen calibration errors randomly select republicans then?
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Three words to stop stuff like this from happening (Score:2)
Third Party Veriification? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Three words to stop stuff like this from happen (Score:2)
"Move to Canada"
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Negligently Crappy, or Deliberatly Malignant (Score:2)
If one "follows the money" it's pretty obvious that Deibold has an incentive to make republicans win, but aren't most of these problems just awful engineering? Crappy programming, bad design, lazy execution.
Still inexcusable, but I just wonder if Deibold et al just suck, and aren't malicious.
Matt
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Just like any PDA these screens probably need to be calibrated. One or more of the poll workers probably didn't do it correctly.
Why is it just the Democrats having issues then?
Every think that maybe it isn't?
If a Democrat is having issues they probably will go running to the press declaring it is all a plot.
A Republican might figure that it was just the machine messing up. Also there is a good chance that any news service would play up
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Flies are typically on crap in less than the 2 days the Diebold ATM at the corner Walgreens is down each week.
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As they say, "neve
Question (Score:2)
Re:Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Studies carried out by conservative institutes, paid for by conservative political funds, and used for conservative political purposes. With such impartial credentials who could doubt the results?
Occams Razor dictates that the simplest answer is most likely the correct one. What is more likely; That a national conspiracy involving Diebold, The Republican party, and THOUSANDS of election workers of all political stripes banded together to hand elections over to the Bush and the Republicans, OR, that a company has made an inferior product that sometimes causes irregularities in the voting records?
I love Occam's Razor games. However, what you've done is create a strawman argument. First you need to add the "unfortunate" declaration by the Diebold that he was personally going to hand victory in Ohio to Bush. Then you subtract the election wokers of all political stripes, because they're not involved. Then you add Diebold employees who admit to having secretly modified the code days before an election occured, and having been deliberately lied to about what the patch did, and being instructed to keep the changes secret from the election officials. Now which explanation is simpler? That the liberal media is making this stuff up, or that just maybe there's something the should be seriously investigated.
Oh right, you don't give a fuck as long as your side is winning, asshole.
Well duh (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, it's Crist? Hmm... well, it's still 84% of our savior.
Nice summary (Score:5, Informative)
It says nothing about why the terminals were malfunctioning, which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time) and nothing to do with some right-wing conspiracy. In fact, the article implies that it was one machine in particular, not all of them.
Way to spin it to work the
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I'm not so sure. While I have not seen the interface in question, every example I've seen of electronic voting machines always employs HUGE buttons on the screen, to minimize this issue. Even if the registrati
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It is not rocket science to deduct the machines were intentionally miscalibrated - especially when the producer of voting machines happens to be a republican backing company.
Re:Nice summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a break! I can just as easily say that all democrats are communists and are helping the Chinese plot an invasion to get some American territory (and women!). Have we become so cynical that we believe the absolute worst of everyone? (Answer: yes) I think everyone needs to take a chill pill for second. Just because a company can does not mean that they will. It is just as likely that it was a genuine mistake that just happened to appear slanted toward Democrats. Remember, we all have a tendency to find patterns [slashdot.org] that conform to our personal bias. Until there is actual proof of intentional tampering, we need to give the benefit of the doubt. Remember, it is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty (regardless what the IRS does).
This inane bashing of the other party has got to stop. For every attack on Republican ethics, I can guarantee that I can name one for the Democrats. They both seem to be crooked and immoral. The fact is that I don't like either side right now. The Republicans seem to causing more harm than good and have lost their foundation. The Democrats offer no real solutions than to say they would do "better" than the Republicans. Both sides seem to be borderline incompetent (okay... no, the Democrats are incompetent -- this election should probably be won by a landslide, but they insist on shooting themselves in the foot). Until we actually start debating what is actually best for the country instead of what will best push forward our agenda or political party, we will only continue to tear ourselves apart.
Why can't we just focus on the problems with electronic voting rather than turning it into a political debate? Why can't we just say that the design is flawed and should not be used? A company can have a bad or flawed design without malicious intent. Anyone who doesn't think so hasn't programmed in the business world very long.
Because Genuine Tampering Is Inevitable... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have we become so cynical that we believe the absolute worst of everyone?
In politics? It's not hard. This has nothing to do with political philosophy, and everything to do with actions that look shady, both circumstantially and concretely. Perhaps you've heard about the recent campaign letter in Orange County discouraging immigrants? Perhaps you've heard about the groups threatening individuals with arrest if they show up at the pools, or telling that 'Democrats vote on Wedn
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JUST poorly designed and implemented?
So that's ok then, is it?
As near as I can tell, rabid partisanship has reached the point in the U.S. where no issue matters unless it is a partisan issue. This would explain all the utterly moronic responses to this article that suggest "this is no big deal because it's JUST gross incompetence on the part of the machine manufacturer.
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- I'm not a registered Democrat, but rather I vote for the people I best identify with. Right now, the Republican party has strayed pretty far from my own views.
- I served in the U.S. military and I have nothing against the troops, or the proper use of them as needed for the defense and security of this nation.
Now, on to your points:
The only definite thing I am hearing from their camp is the desire to repeal the tax breaks, but it was those tax breaks that got the economy ba
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Except that CNN isn't reporting on it. [cnn.com] In fact, about the only references about this issue I've seen about this have been on foreign news sources. The Register is in the UK and another linked video was on a .nl server... [google.com]
Why is it that we in the USA can't get news about what the fuck is happening on our own country except from foreign/tiny news services?
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Re:Nice summary (Score:5, Informative)
Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly.
also
In Miami-Dade, two machines have been taken out of service during early voting. No votes were lost, Sola said.
Now here are the cases the article specifically talks about:
1) Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.
2) Joan Marek, 60, a Democrat from Hollywood, was also stunned to see Charlie Crist on her ballot review page after voting on Thursday. ''Am I on the voting screen again?'' she wondered. ``Well, this is too weird.''
3) Mauricio Raponi wanted to vote for Democrats across the board at the Lemon City Library in Miami on Thursday. But each time he hit the button next to the candidate, the Republican choice showed up. Raponi, 53, persevered until the machine worked. Then he alerted a poll worker.
So besides the "its common", etc they also specifically talk about three specific cases in three seperate cities. Unless, that one machine is really making the rounds I don't see how it could be just one.
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Idiot.
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What I'd need though is an easy out in case it gets detected...some way to allow the blame to be placed on something that can be 'fixed'. Maybe the touch-screen alignment? That's a great idea...I'll just make it so that my random bias hack is temporarilly di
Missing references (Score:2)
Great article.
Will monitors look into this? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, from the sound of things, their role will only be involved in voter intimidation or access to polling places.
But wait, good news everybody! Wan Kim, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said that people shouldn't be concerned about electronic voting machines. Why? Because many groups have reviewed the machines, including the Na
So? (Score:5, Funny)
I have trouble voting for Democrats too.
is that so.... (Score:2)
Well, if that's true, then why aren't Republicans having trouble voting for Republican... oh... never mind.
--
I think I misunderstood the assignment.
Wonderful (Score:2)
Blue map of death. (Score:2)
my best friend's brother's cuzin's buddy said (Score:3, Insightful)
It's insane (Score:2)
fucked up that decimal point... (Score:2)
This "changing the votes" thing is just too obvious to have been done on purpose. I bet there was a hack in place to change some of the votes, but someone fucked up and it starting changi
Let me be the first to say... (Score:2)
Seriously though, these reports have been around locally for a couple of days. What I find interesting though, is that they invariably are from Democrats saying their votes were changed when they checked the summary prior to submitting. There's not one report of a Republican having the same problem that I've heard of yet. So should I take my tin foil hat with me to the polls this year, or not? I'm really, really hoping we're not going to be the laughing sto
They're after me Lucky Stars! (Score:2)
I'll be grabbin' my shillelagh, sure and begorrah!
*Dances a jig*
Hugo Chavez might win for Governor... (Score:2)
Maybe the Diebold's keep bringing up Republicans but I'll bet that the Sequoia [nytimes.com]
electronic voting machines keep showing 'H. Chavez' for every
choice.
Same thing going on in Texas (Score:2)
I still don't understand this (Score:2)
For the sake of argument (Score:2)
Presumably someone will eventually spill the beans and say what has been done, by whom and for how much money. What will American voters, judiciary and legislature do then?
it's all lies .. (Score:2)
Drop the FUD: read the ACTUAL Miami Herald Article (Score:5, Informative)
The headline on the Miami Herald piece? Only minor glitches reported in early voting
Read the full article. You have one woman in Florida who had a problem (or made a mistake), realized the problem, and had it corrected. This is HARDLY voting "shenannigans."
Excerpting from the article:
further clarification (Score:3, Informative)
From what I read in this article, several users encountered a miscalibrated touchscreen so that a press on the screen registered in the wrong place. Several voters only caught the error when reviewing their votes on the final page.
It sounds like a small, correctable problem, and pretty damn far from "sh
Because if you're going to "steal an election" (Score:2)
Sure this has its problems but on the BRIGHT SIDE... How many people voted wrong with the punched cards, didn't check their work and NEVER REALIZED they voted for Pat Buchanan?
Situation and Response Appalling (Score:2)
Only an application developed with an absolutely staggering degree of incompetence and ignorance of basic touchscreen design constraints would be subject to anything like the issues described here. This is particularly true given that, unlike the medical applications of touchscreens, virtually 100% of the screen real estate in e-voting applications is available
Here's more on the subject (Score:2)
We need 'Operation American Freedom' (Score:2)
Cause (Score:2)
And in Texas.... (Score:2)
This story is from Texas and reports the same thing.
Seriously, let them steal it. Here's a metaphor. If you steal enough from a store the store shuts down and there's nothing left to steal. If they keep stealing elections the democracy will shut down. Then we can put the filthy bastards up against the wall.
Keep stealing and manipulating shit assholes. Eventually the levels of
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People in Florida are well known for not knowing what to push based on what they s
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A good cleaning might help (if dust/dirt gets under the edge of the screen, it can screw up the alignment.) but that's a pain. Maybe these machines just aren't being taken care of like they should.
Re:Where is my tinfoil hat? (Score:4, Informative)
SO what we have here is a few incidents with misaligned screens, and a some of the cases, the screen registered the republican instead of the democrat, and of course the press picked up on those in order to feed the conspiracy theories. Actually, the story picked a single incident that that happened in.
So to recap TFA:
There are reports of errors with the voting machines. These appear to be relatively minor and the poll workers are trained to fix them. Some districts keep records of maintenance, some don't, and at least one seals the machines for later review. And in one case, the voter was selecting a Democrat, but it came up Republican, but after three tries they were able to vote for the candidate they wanted. Then they called the press.
Excuse me, but making a big deal about this is just FUD.
Re:Where is my tinfoil hat? (Score:5, Insightful)
These screens are used by people of widely varying height, vision, mental bandwidth, sometimes wearing gloves and sometimes not. They are also exposed to dust and sand and solvents and grease.
While I agree that people have a hard time knowing what to push I wouldn't blame the screens. If someone can't cobble together a reliable touch interface that doesn't need to be calibrated in the field, for a system will run only one application, they are either incompetent or purposely screwing up. The latter would be my guess.
Malice not required. (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to idiocy, carelessness, ignorance, stupidity, incompetence, or laziness; particularly in combination with each other.
That the machines are just poorly-thought-out, poorly-engineered, poorly-constructed, poorly-maintained piles of shit, seems far more likely than such an obvious conspiracy.
I suspect that people cutting corners and generally being lazy or careless results in the deaths of more people every year than intentional, thoughtful acts of evil do. Probably a lot more.
There is a finite amount of evil in the world, but an infinite amount of stupidity.
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I work in the casino industry. We have thousands of touch screens and I couldn't disagree with you more. Touch screens suck. Period. There is not a single less reliable piece of equ
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Most races have a small number of candidates, and giving users the largest possible button drastically decreases misvotes. Interestingly, the larger the button, the more the user will press the center of it, resulting in fewer miscalibration (or, more likely in a voting environment, parallax) issues.
It would be interesting to run a few empirical tests and see if the calibration drifts depending on wh
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In the case of short people, for example, if Crist is listed first and Davis is second, then the alignment of the image with the touchscreen is likelier to be such that attempting to select Davi
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Re:Where is my tinfoil hat? (Score:5, Interesting)
One problem with anecdotal reports is that they can easily be abused by the media to skew people's opinions of what is happening. Suppose, for a moment, that these voting machines are buggy and that you have similar numbers of Republicans and Democrats that have problems voting for their candidates. Now with past voting irregularities in Florida there is an increased sensitivity in Democrat voters to problems like this; this means that these people are more likely to report these problems to the media, and the media are far more likely to report these occurances.
I'm not saying this is what is happening, it is just a possibility.
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the machine magically knows who they are going to vote for.
Therefore, they won't complain.
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Re:Where is my tinfoil hat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that...
1) There is documented evidence of votes for democrats going to republicans.
2) There is no documented evidence of votes for republicans going to democrats.
3) The elections office is being run by republicans.
4) The voting machines are made by a company which is being run by an avid republican supporter.
If you want to keep pretending that this is some minor glitch then go ahead.
widespread reports of visible vote-switching (Score:2)
I saw a pre-release version of this documentary not long ago: Stealing America: Vote by Vote [stealingamerica.org] that talks about large numbers of reports of this vote-switching behavior from the 2004 election. All of the complaints were about Democrat votes being switched to Republican, none went the other way.
And speaking of documentaries there's another one making the rounds of HBO right now: Hacking Democracy [hbo.com].
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Look, I am not saying that there is not a conspiracy here, however this is not much proof of anything bad going on (aside from shody machines). 2 annecdotes from a paper specificly reporting that the machines are showing a republican bias (wich leads me to belive the paper probably has a democrate bias), showes nothing.
meh,
nothing to see here, move along.
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Re:User Error (Score:5, Funny)
Idiots should be able to vote (Score:3, Funny)
I agree; it is important that idiots be able to vote because there are so many of us. We should be able to get the government we want without having to hang an aristocrat from every lamppost.
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Re:Worn machines? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am working reviewing the voting machine software for a major US State. The vendors are very slow bringing out any software for review. The review is technical and not for valid elections.
I have looked at the software and I could see the weaknesses the critics describe. They are real. Any election system that lacks a paper trail including paper ballots that are user validated is in my view fraudulent. The systems have a lot of weaknesses as well.
The most important thing that should change in election machines is that the process we uses should be machine independent. That is the failure or status of any particular machine should not halt the election or prevent the correct casting of a ballot.
The true criterion for an election machine should be that it is (1) Easy to use. (2) Very very difficult for anyone to misuse. (3) It should have a paper ballot copy that is saved and validated by the voter and then placed in a secure box for validation and recounts. (4) The system should have off site valid totals kept in at least 3 locations at all times. These locations should be in different custody chains. (5) The election should be subject to automatic recounts if any of the 3 off site totals do not match up to the local totals or between each other.
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What if there was a issue on one part of the screen and that part always had democrats on the left and republicans on the right?? What if the button areas are too big/too small? This is just anecdotal. Touch screens are inaccurate sometimes. I don't think that the software would even need to be hacked to do this. If I were to "rig" an election, I would definitely not make it viewable to the voter!
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Re:I can't see the problem here (Score:4, Insightful)
Your generous support is helping the lazy rich stay of politics so they can give their money to the lazy people on social programs. You just gotta love being a middle class taxpayer.
what is de-syncing .. (Score:2)
It's always nice to have an expert opinion but according to the article the machine kept listing Republicans only, making it difficult to delect a democrat. How does going out if sync influence the summary of candidates. I too have used touchscreens for over two years and *never* seen de-syncing.
"Another voter who went Democrat across the board kept finding Republicans listed in the summa
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No one was talking about the JFK election until the Republicans felt the need to blow some smoke about the RFK articles in Rolling Stone. "The Democrats do it too!" is one of their talking points... or it was before it became clear how lame that sounds.
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Problem number one.
I think there's evidence of a functional conspiracy, the main smoking gun being the patterns in exit-poll discrepancies in the 2004 election, though the widespread reports of more conventional irregularities in Ohio are good too.
Like I said, functional. I don't know if this would count as "brilliant". And I wouldn't "presuppose"