WV Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes 900
An anonymous reader writes "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.'"
More Cases Than Just This (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm confused as to why the people voting weren't given access to an on site authority or technician that could verify this was occurring. I guess it's also possible this is something that will only happen once rarely but enough to do damage. It could also be attention seeking or insurance to claim fraud if the other side wins.
vote absentee by mail (Score:5, Interesting)
Vote by mail, and make a photocopy of your ballot. It is a lot harder to change a vote when there's a massively distributed paper trail.
I HATE electronic machines (Score:5, Interesting)
In Pennsylvania we have the option of either using the electronic machines, or using a paper ballot. I use the paper ballot every time.
-posted with LYNX, the Commodore 64 browser
Solution. Bring in camera phone with you. (Score:4, Interesting)
Video tape your election vote.
If it does a dodgy switcheroo, you have the evidence that you hit the right button, etc...
But honestly, if you were going to fiddle a machine to flip a few votes to the GOP, why have the output show the flip at all?
Just edit the totals and display whatever the hell you want on the UI.
printf "You have voted for Obama"; McCain++;
Know what I mean?
Re:Parallax, touch screens, stupidity, and conspir (Score:1, Interesting)
They don't need to subversively change your vote, just create a UI for the voting machine that is designed to facilitate voter mistakes, say make the touch area for some candidates bigger than others with a bit of overlap.
This gives you the plausible deniability that it was the voters mistake. Fingers too fat (You know how fat Americans are), plain stupidity (Bubba's just too stupid to work an electronic device), too old (Gramps clearly couldn't see who he was voting for).
Remember, they don't have to deliberately change the votes, just make it so any mistakes made will favor your candidate. From a UI design standpoint, this is easily done.
Until there is a way to be sure the code running on a voting machine is properly vetted, it's insane to think they should be trusted.
If your willing to trust one of these machines, just give me your paper ballot. I promise it will get tallied correctly. ;)
Refusing to take personal responsibility (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Parallax, touch screens, stupidity, and conspir (Score:2, Interesting)
It's really just Windows that gives no feedback!
Re:Parallax, touch screens, stupidity, and conspir (Score:2, Interesting)
You didn't teach your parents to use their PCs as much as you taught them how to cope with a terrable UI. There should always be instant feedback to a user's actions, otherwise it starts causing confusion.
I think user interface design is a facinating subject, but, sadly, it is often dismissed by programmers as the user's inability to use technology and not a problem with their UI.
The UseIT alertbox [useit.com] is an excelent source of articles on UI (primarally web based). There is also this [asktog.com] interesting look at the 2000 Florida "butterfly ballot".
Re:Parallax, touch screens, stupidity, and conspir (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe not just UI, but poor calibration. I'm not sure how modern touch screen monitors work, but I know on a touch screen mobile device, you still have to calibrate it. If it isn't done correctly, every single vote will be skewed.
All the same, it seems to me a series of question/answers should be relatively trivial to write correctly. I'm talking Sophomore level of college here, at worst. If they can't get the UI to work on these things in that amount of time, someone needs burnt alive to their very deaths.
Re:In it to steal it (Score:2, Interesting)
It couldn't possibly be that the media have been using the "polls" as a tool to influence voter opinion, and as the election nears, have to move towards the accurate polls so they're not so far off on the day of the election that nobody believes them any more.
Since they can't show McCain winning (unless he's going to win by a landslide, which I definitely don't see happening), the closest they'll come is "within the margin of error": they can always show an Obama win, but leave just enough doubt that after the election they won't appear to have blatantly tried to manipulate an election.
Re:Parallax, touch screens, stupidity, and conspir (Score:3, Interesting)
I have seen electronic voting machines in India, they seem lower tech than fancy voting machines from the US, however they work, they are like a keyboard, each key has a label next to it. an LED lights up registering your vote when you click them, its simple and it works.
When you click them, you know what key you have clicked and who you have voted for.
picture here http://www.bel-india.com/BELWebsite/images/EVM.jpg [bel-india.com]
Re:Clarification (Score:4, Interesting)
Commodore 64's have mice. Here's a picture of one that's basically an Amiga 500 mouse and intended to be used with GEOS (Mac-like OS). Or with games like Marble Madness/Arkanoid. ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_peripherals#Input_devices [wikipedia.org]
Re:Paper Ballots (Score:5, Interesting)
The simple answer: Because a good paper ballot is hard to forge (in time for the pre-counting of the votes).
Previously in US, Inc. where paper ballots have been used in the past, they've been "lost", "stolen", or switched out for "other" ballots with different counts.
Electronic voting doesn't have all of those pesky "accountability" issues that paper ballots have.
Man Of The Year!?! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's exactly like in the movie!
/sarcasm
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:50 million can't use a computer? Ain't it funny (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess that's why you want military advisers for. The president needs only his intelligence and common sense to take the right decision of the choices that have been put before him. One person cannot know ALL of military, economics, education, healthcare and so on.
Re:Parallax, touch screens, stupidity, and conspir (Score:3, Interesting)
CNN was showing video of retards having problems with the touch screens.
They got a test machine set up and had to do the most retarded crap ever to make it mess up.
McCain is listed on the top, and Obama just below.
They round of some fossil of a lady and have her vote for Obama, with her finger at the very top of the box. She leaves her finger there for a second, and you can see the check mark and highlighting appear for Obama. They then have her remove her finger in the most retarded fashion possible - rolling it upwards and then pulling away, after the tip of her finger has just tapped McCain's box, and voted for him.
This was all shown at a ridiculously high camera angle of course, to make it seem like her finger was lower than it really was.
I don't get why the media focuses on retarded voters and parts of the system that work fine, yet completely ignore the real issues with electronic voting machines.
Also - am I the only one who hates CNN's i-Reporter bullshit? They ALWAYS make it a point to call them "Our" (CNN's) i-Reporters. Yeah, we get it CNN, you got embarrassed because you kept having to show youtube videos as news. Now you show youtube videos as news, but you have your own site, and get to downplay the fact that these people aren't reporters, they're just plebes with cell phones.
Re:Parallax, touch screens, stupidity, and conspir (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok... then make the cues a little more OBVIOUS.
OH... mebbe in stead of a pretty obvious timepiece (clock or hourglass) then
throw up a big fat dialog box that says "PLEASE WAIT WHILE I PROCESS THIS".
Despite what some people would like to claim, we do share a common culture
here and a common frame of reference at some level. Hillbillies really aren't
from Mars.
Hanging chads were due to crappy ballots (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw a documentary a while back about that; the card makers used crappy paper stock to make the ballots. They disregarded their own QA people's warning, and shipped cards that wouldn't tear off neatly as they used to.
Nice blaming the victim once again.
Re:Parallax, touch screens, stupidity, and conspir (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly -- when I made some touch-screen software for a company, one of the first things I wrote in was a delay timer to disable the 'okay' and 'cancel' buttons immediately after a window appears or disappears for about a quarter of a second.
In testing, some users would click the screen twice by accident, the first one saying okay to a window that was in front of another screen with a button directly where the 'okay' had been, possibly cancelling a screen they didn't mean to cancel.
Re:50 million can't use a computer? Ain't it funny (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're charged with passing laws relating to the task, one would expect you to be knowledgeable about it or at least informed.
Even if a referee is physically incapable of playing a football game they should be able to decide a play.
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? Maybe you can give us some examples of votes "flipping" from Republican to Democrat?
How in the world can you be comfortable with the idea of a company whose CEO has said that he'd "do anything to help the Republicans" building proprietary voting machines with no paper trails to back them up?
Go read some stories about the 2006 gubernatorial election in Georgia, where the Democratic candidate had a significant lead and after midnight (seriously) with the machines in a room with only the Republican Secretary of State and his workers, 25,000 Republican votes that nobody knew about suddenly appeared. No paper trail, no audit mechanism, just 25,000 Republican votes popping up.
How can you possibly be well-informed about the history of electronic voting in America and still think that it's a superior method to people marking paper ballots and dropping them into a locked box (and then having an equal number of judges from both parties count them)?
Please though, I'm very interested in your assertion that there are instances of votes being flipped "both ways". I'm really looking forward to your examples.
Re:50 million can't use a computer? Ain't it funny (Score:4, Interesting)
Excuse me, but Stephen fucking Hawking can use a computer and not move any part of his fucking body, and McCain, who is wealthy enough not only to buy a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking ($145 retail), but probably buy the whole company company has to have his wife sit and read email to him?
Is Cindy going to sit next to him in the oval office and move the mouse around for him? Gee, I hope she stays off the Vicodin the day John McCain has to google "cyberterrorism".
This pitiful use of McCain's POW status to excuse every one of his shortcomings is really sickening. Strange, most people who have experienced horrific things in war don't like to talk about it, but McCain can't say three sentences without reminding us that he was a POW. He usually leaves out the part about making propaganda films for his captors, though.
We should give up on E-voting (Score:5, Interesting)
The battle for e-voting has been lost. Just as many posts in this topic prove, the public is hyper sensitive and hyper suspicious of electronic voting. They aren't going to trust it no matter what. It matters not whether or not their fears are justified.
We should return to paper ballots. They are the only voting method that might be accepted.
I happen to believe that paper balloting is much more subject to actual fraud and abuse than any other method. There are centuries of history in finding creative ways to cheat on paper ballots. Still, actual fraud is irrelevant, only public confidence matters.
My preferred solution would require a constitutional amendment. Prior to an election, the authorities would declare a target margin of error. Say 5%. The margin would account for fraud, abuse, errors, miscounts, whatever. The winner would have to win a plurality with a margin greater than 5% over the second place candidate. If the results are closer than 5%, the election is declared a tie and a whole new election would be required. Sure, that might result in revote after revote after revote, but not an infinite series.
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Interesting)
If they were "overseas military votes" there would have been a paper trail, since the military votes via absentee ballots.
No, they weren't military votes. But nice try, Anonymous Coward, and I'll be happy to pull down my "partisan hack bloomers" so you can kiss my furry ass.
Re:50 million can't use a computer? Ain't it funny (Score:3, Interesting)
Bush served in the military. He was a pilot in the guard.
I think you mean he never went to the war which it does appear the he avoided while in the service.
I'm not sure why this is even an Issue. Clinton made it clear that military service didn't matter anymore.