Voting Machines Selecting Default Candidates 794
"Some voters in Las Vegas have noticed that Democrat Harry Reid's name is checked by default on their electronic voting machines. By way of explanation, the Clark County Registrar says that when voters choose English instead of Spanish, Reid's Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, has her name checked by default."
Re:I abstain (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, all voters should be presumed to cast a "none of the above" ballot unless they specifically vote otherwise. Yes, even those who abstain by not showing up. Failure to even show up is a vote of no confidence in the system itself, which is a very important statement and deserves to be counted.
If the majority of the population doesn't even show up to vote, that is a de facto vote against the system. Nobody can claim a mandate to govern under such circumstances. Any government elected under such circumstances cannot be considered legitimate.
Re:Explanation? (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>shitty embedded UI programming,
The geek's definition of government.
I think we should go back to paper scantrons. They can be counted twice - once by machine, and again by hand, for verification. Also it's hard to rig an election when you have several thousand pounds of paper laying around.
Re:I abstain (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm Canadian, so maybe the political situation is completely different "down there", but I think you are reading a little too much into people not showing up to vote.
Sure some people are making a statement by not voting, but I think most who do not vote are either lazy (probably the majority) or don't feel they have enough understanding to make a serious choice.
And personally, I would actually rather have a relatively small turn out of voters making a choice based on their beliefs, than a huge crowd of people just randomly picking a candidate because everyone is telling them they must vote. Voting isn't the important part.. keeping yourself aware of the politics of your country is!
I do like the idea of specifically counting people who say "I don't think any of these are good" and maybe even a "I don't feel confident to make a choice". Would be an interesting number to see.
Re:Explanation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not evil or a conspiracy or anything but a UI error that really isn't that terrible
If incompetence and sloppy design work in your favor it is exactly that: "evil or a conspiracy".
That's how most gender or minority discrimination usually works. Incompetence and a attitude of not-thinking/ not-caring is what protects the status quo. I've seen it in job applications - and also your defense "just a mistake".
Re:Figures (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no default choice. The selection screen is right after the language screen. If you press English and linger too long, it also selects what ever is at the position when the next screen shows up.
This is a 'young tester' type of bug. Any tester whose is comfortable and used to the type of technology won't see it. As soon as an old person whose finger lingers, it shows up.
Re:My Favorite Line in the Article: (Score:3, Interesting)
It is not unreasonable to have faith in a system that has demonstrated it is worthy of trust. Electronic voting, so far, hasn't earned anyone's trust. On the contrary, it seems the more anyone hears about it, the less faith they have in that system.
Lol, you are joking right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Fox is right wing, but not all of it is as insane as Beck. With the simpsons, they can show they got a humor but also make Homer into a kinda reverse hero. Left wingers might see him as an idiot and an example of everything that is wrong with people who vote against healthcare until they need it but he ALSO survives all his mistakes. He never dies in the unsafe work environment and has his widow screwed out of compensation. He hasn't undergone forced sterilization and this is NEVER ever mentioned despite this really have happened in nuclear facilities in the US.
Somehow despite all the jokes, the stabs and parodies, the right-wing dumb guy wins through. Same with all the other shows.
"You might be a redneck if..." how many rednecks proudly proclaim to be a redneck? It is not degrading when beat yourself on the chest. Homer is not a pititful figure to many, but a hero. It is a very good bit of propoganda. Remember that Goebels most beloved movie had a Jew as the hero. Propoganda is best when it doesn't label it on.
Perhaps this is impossible to see for an American. You might be so entrenched in the American way of life that you can't see just how much these shows celebrate this. Its battle cry is NOT "We are the best and everything is perfect" but "Things might suck, but we are still the best". It works. It takes the wind out of everyone who might dare to question the status quo.
No, if you think these shows are somehow left-wing, you got a very distorded view of the left. But what do you expect from someone who watches so many cartoons :P
Unrelated...but not. (Score:1, Interesting)
Registered on the State site for absentee voting....nice site with default SSL (128-bit RC4) etc.. Fairly user-friendly.
Then I had to try several times because my password did not match their complexity rules (at least 1 upper case, at least 1 number, at least one special character, at least 8 characters long overall up to 32 chars). The typical crap. So I gave in and pasted the pwgen -s -y 32 1 output into it just for fun. Little prepared me for the shock I received, when I opened my e-mail box and saw a confirmation e-mail about the registration. It had both my username AND password in plain-text right in it! To make matters worse, the page to change the password didn't even work. So I now have a pw I can't change and that flew around somewhere in the world for everyone interested to see. I wonder, who's gonna vote in my place...
Wow...just wow.
(Am not even gonna get into the "Best viewed with Internet Explorer part...)
Re:*Citation Needed* (Score:3, Interesting)
You're talking about local elections, though. Why not let everyone who lives in your town help choose the city council members?
Re:*Citation Needed* (Score:5, Interesting)
A local community deciding it's own rules. Isn't that what the Tea Party/GOP has been spouting off about for years?
Re:I abstain (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really. They live in their own, separate nations, and are able to do things however they want. They're not even subject to the laws of the States that their reservations happen to lie within; they only answer to the Federal government, and deal with them on a treaty basis through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
For instance, here in Arizona, state law is that you can own a gun, and as of recently, you can carry it concealed with you just about wherever you want without a permit. However, if you cross over into an Indian Reservation (easy to do since they're everywhere, with many of them bordering the Phoenix metro area), suddenly those laws are null and void, and you can be thrown in jail for possessing a firearm, something that's illegal on reservations. There's even a bunch of weird exceptions, because many public roads cross through reservations, so just having a gun with you as you're driving could get you in trouble when you cross into a Res, but usually they have agreements with the State government called "safe passage", so if you're only passing through and not stopping you're OK, but don't stop for gas or anything because you could get in trouble then.
However, in my observation, the Natives are much more pragmatic and realistic than many immigrants from the South; even though they'd be entirely within their rights to only use their native languages, they all know and use English because it makes it much easier for them to work with and interact with everyone around them (esp. when they set up big fancy casinos).
Re:Explanation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Further suppose that the company that makes the voting machines happens to have Nevada roots [state.az.us]...
Also note that if you read the story, it is the Republican you get if you hold down on English too long. Presumably even in Nevada that is the more likely scenario. Nice deal when you can have a bug in your favor and complain about it too...
Re:Abstaining creates fraud. (Score:3, Interesting)
The article was lousy. There was no "default" candidate being set. It correctly starts out as a blank ballot. The issue is that if your finger is still lying on the touch screen when the ballot comes up it will instantly trigger whatever candidate your finger happens to be touching. It happens so fast that the voter never saw the blank ballot. It looks as if the candidate came up pre-selected. You can change that mistaken selection before casting the ballot.
There is no fraud, nothing remotely resembling fraud. They definitely do need to clean up that touchscreen user interface. Confusing or unexpected behavior on a voting machine is a Very Bad Thing. Voting machine programmers must make extra special efforts to deal with potentially sloppy input from inexperienced users.
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Re:Really? (Score:1, Interesting)
In the suburbs of Chicago, there are schools that do not have English as the primary language. I know because my son was attending one that they didn't have enough students speaking English to fill the classroom, so he was going to have to be shipped to another school instead. We decided it was time to move instead.
Re:I abstain (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe not speak (i.e. technically mute (You Insensitive Anonymous Clod)), but citizens should be able to read English (by braille if nothing else). The states are required to provide K-12 education (of which English is a required subject for all 13 years).
English is not a required subject in all jurisdictions. Whether to make it so or not is up to the state or local government, and there are often strong political reasons not to--for instance, while the overwhelming majority of Navajo speak English there is still a minority who do not. There's no political will to impose English on the remaining population.
As a practical matter (regardless of the actual law), many areas of the US that are not natively English speaking do not provide significant English-language instructions (e.g. parts of French-speaking Maine and Louisiana, German-speaking Pennsylvania, native-speaking Alaska, Chamorro-speaking Guam, Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico--and, of course, various other Native American communities).
In some of those (e.g. parts of German-speaking Pennsylvania) religious freedom issues would seem to legally trump government education requirements, in addition to the de facto reality.
Wááshindoon bizaad ádin (No nationa (Score:3, Interesting)
Diné bizaad doo nilh bééhózingo biniina, doo yánílhti' da.
(You do not speak Navajo, so you should not talk.)
And on the flip side, I give you various signs at Teabag rallies [google.com]. Though written and not spoken, some choice examples (emphasis mine): Obama: Commander and Theif , Respect Are Country, Remember Descent the Highest Form of Patriotic, Politicians Are Like Dipers , Obama Lier In Chief...
Examples like these make me think that an awful lot of people protesting at Tea Party rallies would be disqualified by your criterion. Mind you, I'm not saying one way or the other whether you support the Tea Party -- I'm simply trying to point out that, even if we decide that English is the national language (which, at the moment, it is not in any official de jure capacity), many supposed native speakers do not seem to speak / write / understand the language all that well.
Cheers,