Aftermath Of Failed Electronic Voting 84
dstates writes "The Christian Science Monitor and NPR report that failed electronic voting machines lost thousands of votes in Carteret County North Carolina, and the election for state agriculture commissioner is headed to court. A combination of human error (setting the machine to record a maximum of three thousand votes when eight thousand people voted) and a software malfunction (the machine kept accepting ballots after its memory was overloaded) resulted in the loss of 4,500 votes in an election decided by only 2,300 votes."
All Human Error... (Score:4, Insightful)
It was human error on the part of the those who set it up and human error on the part of election officials who decided to use a product that wasn't thoroughly tested. Someone beyond the techs that administer the machines needs to be on the hook for this. Just because the machines that failed are electronic doesn't mean that there was no negligence on the part of those that chose to use them.
Re:Stats don't make sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stats don't make sense... (Score:2, Insightful)
... I've been reading about this, and ... (Score:4, Insightful)
A. Why you would have a maximum number of votes for a machine AT ALL.
B. Why you would have something like a memory contraint AT ALL in these days of cheaper-than-dirt storage.
C. Why you would have either or both of A and B if you wanted a fair election.
Can someone fill me in?
Bush lost, cheated, and was declared the winner (Score:2, Insightful)
further evidence of flawed system (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just further evidence of a deeply flawed system. There is absolutely no reason that we can't have an honest and reliable election system in this country. You can do with old-fashioned paper ballots and hand-counting in the presence of scrutineers from all parties. Instead we've got a mishmash of systems, many of them untested, many with known flaws, some of them run by companies like Diebold known to be both incompetant and dishonest. We can't be sure who won this election.
Re:... I've been reading about this, and ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not the Republicans, but certainly the Neo-cons (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a Republican, as are most of the people in my family, and for that matter most of the people in my state. And I don't know anyone who approves of what was done in this last election, once they are confronted with the facts. The closest is a sort of lame "well, they probably meant well" or "it must have been overly enthusiastic grunts"--but you can see in their faces that they don't buy it.
But none of them are happy about it. We were raised, I guess, with those "moral values" that everyone's talking about. And I don't recall cheating on that list, anywhere. No, I take that back. There was "Cheaters never prosper" and "If you cheat, you only cheat yourself" and "Better to die for the truth then live a lie."
But to hear the media tell it, we're all a bunch of saps that aprove of doing anything to win (When in fact we were taught "The ends don't justify the means." and "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.").
As my brother said at Thanksgiving, "I want my party back!"
--MarkusQ
Corporate Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
There's also no mention of the joke that is government testing and certification of these machines. Unless the elections controllers have demonstrated proof that the machines have been tested without failure or serious vulnerability, they must assume the machines will fail. And they can't claim ignorance of the risk, compounded by the absence of mitigation in a fallback auditable record, like a paper log. So these government officials, representing the people of North Carolina, are also unaccountable for their gross malfeasance.
These people have violated the public trust in North Carolina most seriously. It's not necessary to prove they colluded to design a failed election, for their political or economic benefit. Their gross malfeasance has deprived thousands of North Carolinans their fundamental right to vote, regardless of its effect on the election, though there seems to be at least one office, Secretary of Agriculture, which is seriously damaged. The irresponsible people must be unmasked, and sent to jail for these serious crimes against the people.
Re:Not the Republicans, but certainly the Neo-cons (Score:2, Insightful)
But none of them are happy about it. We were raised, I guess, with those "moral values" that everyone's talking about. And I don't recall cheating on that list, anywhere. No, I take that back. There was "Cheaters never prosper" and "If you cheat, you only cheat yourself" and "Better to die for the truth then live a lie."
I wish there were more Republicans like you, instead of Sean Hannity/Limbaugh/random GOP apologist. The "good" Republicans seem to have been almost entirely sidelined, while those in power (Bush, Delay) are corrupt and willing to commit any crime in order to advance their power.
The last good Republican president was Dwight Eisenhower, and he's the one who warned against the "military industrial complex" that seems to have since successfully taken over a large part of the national agenda.
Re:Answer: The Republicans are fucking criminals (Score:3, Insightful)
So where in the world did you grow up?
When I was a boy growing up in the US, one of the firm lessons that was drilled into us was that a guy with any brains wouldn't "kiss and tell". We had a name for such a guy; we called him a "jerk". If you wanted the slightest chance with the chicks, you'd keep very quiet about what you did with them in private. I understood all this at an early age, perhaps because most of my good friends were of the female persuasion. I suspect that this was true for Bill Clinton, too. Talking about your sex life would get you a bad rep and cut your chances.
Bill was just being a normal American guy who likes women and wants to "protect their reputation", as the saying goes. And his choice of a wife tells us that he sees women for who they are, not just for their bod. "Yeah, he fools around with bimbos. But look at the woman he married. What a man!"
When the stories about Bill's sex life started coming out, we also heard the reports about 80% of American women having dreams (or daydreams) of sex with him. As an experiment, I tried mentioning the above explanation to various women. Invariably, they'd grin. Quite a few of them said that this was one reason they dreamed about sex with him.
Sorry, but outside of the most extreme anti-sex right-winger crowds, Bill's secrecy about what he and Monica were doing was not only not criminal in any way; it was the expected behavior of a fellow who wants to avoid the "jerk" label. It was highly honorable behavior.
If you think otherwise, you're simply announcing an extremist anti-sex attitude, probably having something to do with extremist religious beliefs.
As for the "lying to Congress" charge; Congress had no business asking him about his private sex life. That was underhanded politics in the extreme, and it's a lot of why so many people are dismissing the Republican party as a gang of radical fundamentalists now. No honorable American male would even think of asking such things in a public forum. When the Senate Republicans did so, it merely told us that they are a bunch of jerks.
(We would gossip about him in private, of course. But we'd never expect Bill to tell us the truth. A grin and a chuckle would do. Nudge, nudge; wink; wink.
Now back to bashing Wally O'Dell and company
Re:Answer: The Republicans are fucking criminals (Score:3, Insightful)
What he did was perjury, something for which you and I, mere mortals, would have spent a little time on probation for (first offense, probably wouldn't have served any time). Now, did this warrant an impechement? Hell, no. Maybe a congressional censure, or a very firm letter, but that's about it. But let's not go to the other extreme and say he didn't do anything wrong. Lying under oath is treated differently for a whole host of reasons.
Re:Stats don't make sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't really have a dog in this race, despite being from NC, but it seems to me ($0.02) that they should only repoll the ~4500 people whose votes were lost. Rather than letting the candidates affect the outcome by campaigning to people who didn't bother to vote the first time. If only the lost votes are repolled, the results should be pretty similar to what they would have been if the votes had not been lost.
Oh, and since you were nit-picking, when you only have 1 sig-fig, 8000-3000=5000 doesn't mean that the answer isn't actually closer to 4500.
Re:Answer: The Republicans are fucking criminals (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe you need to read up a little more on your history and why Clinton was actually on trial in the first place. If lawyers were allowed to make convictions for every little thing under the sun besides the exact reason they are in the court in the first place, well...there would be a lot more people in jail for shit that's not illegal, but just stuff they were just too ashamed to want anyone else to hear about.
Think about it.
Re:Answer: The Republicans are fucking criminals (Score:2, Insightful)
No, its not, in the slightest. Wether or not Clinton had had consensual sex with Monica is irrelevant to wether or not he harrassed Paula Jones(Tripp trail? wtf?). Even the judge said so, look it up if you want to.
something for which you and I, mere mortals, would have spent a little time on probation for
Nonsense. You forget that Starr and Republicans in Congress didn't set out to convict him of any specific crime, they set out to convict him of *something*, by any means necessary. They couldn't find anything with Whitewater, they couldn't find anything with Vince Foster, so they asked him enought irrelevant questions about his private life until he was forced into telling a lie, and then making a bs pergury charge. If the government spent over $60 million dollars going over every inch of your life with a microscope, the worst thing they could dig up was you cheating on your wife/girlfriend? No, normal individuals get investigated for a specific charge, get indited and go to trial. Not have the government ingestigate and investigate and investigate until they find SOMETHING to charge you with.
Maybe a congressional censure, or a very firm letter
The real justice would have been prosecuting Starr and the GOP reps in Congress for malicious prosecution.