Voting Machines and 'Calibration Drift' 217
An anonymous reader writes "Tuesday saw elections for school boards and city officials throughout Kansas. In Saline, ES&S voting machines in several locations were 'mis-calibrated,' and when the voter touched next to one candidate's name, the 'x' appeared next to another one. One person I talked to said he tried to vote three times before going to the 80-something-year-old election worker, who told him 'It was doing that earlier, but I thought I fixed it.' From the story in today's Salina Journal: 'The iVotronic machines used in Saline County are sold by Elections Systems and Software. In October, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law notified 16 secretaries of state, including Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh, that the machines are known to record votes to the wrong candidate.' The county does calibrate the machines the day before each election, but, '... in conversations with ES&S on Thursday, [the county clerk] was told that the calibration might change during the day. "What they've seen is calibration drift on a unit," Merriman said. "They're fine in the morning, but by afternoon they're starting to lose their calibration."' There was also coverage of the problems when they occurred two days ago."
a new low for /. (Score:4, Insightful)
One person I talked to said he tried to vote three times before going to the 80-something-year-old election worker, who told him 'It was doing that earlier, but I thought I fixed it.'
What does that have to do with anything? It's not in TFA. Am I supposed to just take your word for it? Even so, what's it supposed to mean? Old people can't calibrate newfangled voodoo touchscreens?
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@49 years of age, I'm still one of the youngest poll workers around my area, as I've been for the past 20 or so years I've been doing it. Kids nowadays, they just aren't interested in working 14 hours straight with a half-hour break, for less than a C-note. sheesh.
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Yeah, how dare they seek jobs that actually let them pay their obscene insurance premiums and college tuition. Lazy bastards.
Re:a new low for /. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a part time gig, take a day off your regular job and serve the community. Old school shit.
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Why would I work 14 hours for just a C-note? I'd want at least a major third on top of that.
rofl@conureman's responders (Score:3, Informative)
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From personal experience, very few octogenarians understand diddly about computers. From personal experience with technical support, I would say that a lot of octogenarians take on part time jobs as an ISP's support personnel. While I don't approve of "discrimination" based on age, let's be realistic. Older people are NOT as technically savvy as younger people. Example? I'm 52, my youngest kid is 17. What I have to study, he absorbs by osmosis. He has left me eating his dust with technological gadget
Re:a new low for /. (Score:4, Funny)
Now, give the keyboard back to your son and let him continue to read /.
Calibrate Per Use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. A system with a touch in the top left corner, bottom right corner, then the center of the screen would add only a very small amount of time.
After calibrated, the machine could show 4 lists of 4 items, and have the user select 1 highlighted element on each of the 4 lists to ensure that the calibration was correct. If they could not select the 4 items, a light could go off on the station to alert poller assistants.
I'm as frustrated as you are, hal. This is the type of thing that would come up in even the most basic systems testing. Even some of the worst programmers that I went to college with would have made sure that the system was calibrated properly.
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I can't believe people here think this is a good idea. You will need to explain to so many people just what the hell it is they are doing and why they must do it, because it will be far, far from intuitive. They will come off with the impression that the whole system is a complete hack... Perhaps you're on to something after all.
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd favour that solution for an entirely different reason: The average voter understands pencils. Trust is a vital part of the election process, and having it depend on something that, to the average voter, is effectively magic is not a good idea because it undermines trust in the electoral process. Even if the machine is 100% reliable, only a small subset of the electorate are capable of verifying this, the rest are required to trust these people.
Whenever I suggest this, however, I am told that elections in the USA are too complicated for paper and they have to use machines or they would never be able to count the results.
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:4, Funny)
Careful - keep it up and the feds will appoint an "Election Czar". Or maybe the UN will send "observers".
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Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:5, Funny)
I live in Minnesota. Even pencils didn't save us from court appointed observers. Our Senate election is still up in the air.
Minnesota's problem is precisely that they didn't have electronic voting. That would have allowed the result to have been determined before the election.
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Careful - keep it up and the feds will appoint an "Election Czar". Or maybe the UN will send "observers".
I would welcome UN observers. It might clean up some of this nonsense we are having with our elections in recent years. Besides, how can we as a nation demand observers for other countries elections and get all upset when they demand observers on our elections? A bit of a double standard I think.
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US elections are bought and paid for through media outlets. Observers wouldn't make a fart in a whirlwind of difference (well, maybe confirmation the media campaign was effective). There's really no need to tamper with the actual voting process itself.
Voting in political elections isn't very much different than voting
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Whenever I suggest this, however, I am told that elections in the USA are too complicated for paper and they have to use machines or they wouldn't get immediate results.
Hyperbole is not helpful.
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:5, Informative)
At the polling places I've worked, the (touchscreen) AutoMark machine (for voters with disabilities, &c.) marks a paper ballot, which is counted by the M100 scanner. After the polls close, we seal the marked ballots up in boxes which never get opened up unless there is a problem with the computer's count. The protocols (except for the software) seem fairly robust and transparent, and skeptics are welcome to watch. That's Contra Costa County, YMMV.
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Fortunately, I'm the only person in my precinct that has ever actually used it, I do it for practice in case I need to help or demonstrate. It does not seem very intuitive or easy to use. I suspect competition in the industry could encourage innovation, but these are government contracts -one can only imagine the various influences shaping the process. I envision something worthy of Twain's "Gilded Age", and laugh. Tax dollars for entertainment, not new.
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That's too reliable, man! We can't leave the outcome of an election up to the voters!
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Mouse and keyboard (Score:2)
Maybe we can compromise - a simple and cheap tech input device that's also reliable. Mouse/keyboard. Has no one considered this?
When did we decide that touch screens are easier? They aren't. They're a pain in the ass for everyone. Unless, maybe, you're an amputee, and you're depending on being able to touch the screen with your nubs, or if your arthritis prevents you from gripping a mouse. In those cases, maybe we should think about what we did in paper/pencil days (someone needs to help you, I'm gues
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You assume the pencil is reliable. It isn't.
You ever seen a graded stack of scantrons?
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We use black felt-tip pens.
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Or, for a more reliable solution, do the same thing they do with cash machines and, rather than using a touch screen, put a row of buttons next to the screen and get users to push the button next to the candidate's name.
I've seen poorly calibrated ATMs where they have two options with arrows pointing to the side of the monitor and neither lines up with a button, so you have to guess which button applies to which.
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Unfortunately you'll get the same screen alignment problems with the cash machine approach. I've seen many cash machines where the screen text was not aligned with the buttons, creating an ambiguity about which one you touch. You can count from the bottom most of the time to figure it out, but some voters will inevitably miss that logical step.
Paper is still the best choice.
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The machine I used for the National election was pretty sweet... it used a dial selector like a classic iPod and your selection was highlighted as you scrolled through the options. There was a big green button to confirm your choice and then a screen after that displayed your choice and instruction to confirm again.
It was pretty idiot proof IMHO. Oh you also get a paper receipt.
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Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it wouldn't be too hard, it's not how it's "supposed to" work.
A person is supposed to go into the booth and vote, not start to hack on workarounds for obviously faulty hardware design. To bring in the car analogy: it's like having electrically adjustable car lights, and having to re-set them every time you turn them on because they wouldn't remember their position when turned off, or simply "drifted" during you drive.
Besides: even if you and I and most Palm users are able to perform such (granted, relatively simple) tasks as calibrating a touch screen, not everybody is (think: grandma). And while one may argue whether this is good or not, one cannot argue about one thing: the constitution gives *everyone* above a certain age the right to vote, not only to those who can calibrate touch-screens.
And: while it was your *choice* to own a palm, it was not everybody's choice to vote electronically. It is (was?) imposed on us. So if somebody is making me vote electronically, they at least ought make sure the damn technology fsck'ing works. It's not like it's rocket science, and it's not like there wouldn't be easy ways to make it work reliably -- worst case, for example by using regular buttons left and right of the screens instead of touch screens (think ATMs of most banks).
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should anybody be incapable of calibrating a touchscreen? I honestly cannot think of a single situation in which that would occur (barring actual physical disability that would prevent a person from using the machine entirely). I think you're underestimating poor grandma if you think she's incapable of pressing a button on a touchscreen. In fact, why should a person even need to know that they are doing a calibration at all? Why not just have "Press here to begin casting your vote" with a nice obvious red button, and then a few other simple inane comments requiring the user press a button to continue? Job done.
Saying that, I actually agree with you that a voter shouldn't have to go to the trouble of doing a calibration to work around the machine's faults. But arguing that such a calibration would somehow be discriminatory is an utter nonsense to my way of thinking. Anybody who is capable of using a touchscreen machine to vote is equally capable of calibrating it. As the GP poster said, you just touch three places on the screen and you're good to go.
Re:Calibrate Per Use? (Score:5, Informative)
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Is it really necessary? I mean... I *never* calibrated my iPhone. Ever.
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I wonder if it's an issue of hardware cost. Maybe it's just that reliable touch screens are too expensive for municipalities to buy in bulk? (in which case I would argue again that they shouldn't be using them at all if they're not going to be reliable).
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Definitely not a good idea.
A better idea would be for them to purchase voting machines that are open source and that actually work as designed.
You Shouldn't Have to Calibrate Per Use (Score:3, Insightful)
You shouldn't have to calibrate per use. My phone is a touch screen device and I use it all day. Since I've bought it over a year ago it never lost its calibration. I've never seen other touch-screen devices lose their calibration so quickly in other areas. Whether it be the software or hardware, something is faulty with these machines. How much do tax payers shell out for these pieces of shit? With that kind of cash floating around, and for something as important as voting, there shouldn't be stupid issues
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You shouldn't have to calibrate per use. My phone is a touch screen device and I use it all day. Since I've bought it over a year ago it never lost its calibration.
As an engineering problem, your phone has several advantages over a touch-screen voting machine.
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it's really abominable that these $A_LOT voting machines "forget" where a certain position on the screen is only after a few hours! it looks more a "feature" than a drift to me...
I'm growing tired of suggesting over and over the simple use of actual push-buttons (not on-screen ones) to go with the voting process (or to be considered for "manual override" use by the voter)...
Why even use machines (Score:3, Informative)
Here in England we vote using paper and pens. The pens never need calibrating.
We don't understand why machines have any advantages at all. We never queue up to vote either.
I don't vaguely trust my vote to a piece of electronics. And I'm not a luddite, I'm a programmer.
'Drift' sounds like a rubbish excuse (Score:4, Interesting)
Right. I've been using touchscreen gear for more than 11 years now. Monitors with touchscreens built in, tablet PCs, iMacs with touch-enabling overlays, two cintiqs of my own and many dozens I've sold and supported to graphic artists.
They NEVER 'drift'. I've not seen even the cheapest touchscreen gear 'drift'. What's with this drift excuse? That smells too much like an excuse for throwing elections. Color me for stating the obvious, but sorry that sounds too suspicious.
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As the software is proprietary and secret, we can only speculate as to the cause for this irregularity. BTW I'm not working the polls May 19, I'm on VACATION.
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I am sorry but on a voteing machine the entire software stack should be OPEN.
How do you *know* its a hardware problem if you don't have the ability to audit the software? Maybe there is a back door and someone can setup up so that if candidate X is doing a little to well, a certain number of clicks on X get recorded as clicks W above or Y below so it *looks* like a hardware calibration issue.
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One anecdote is not data.
I'VE been using touchscreen's for 11 years and MY 11 year old Palm Pilot Vx touchscreen drifts ALL THE TIME.
It drifts from hour to hour as the temperature of the unit changes. It didn't do this when it was young, but it got so bad that I almost threw it out because sometimes I couldn't get into calibration mode the calibration was so bad.
Then I found a Palm App called "Digifix", which lets you recalibrate the screen no matter how bad the drift is by entering calibration upon soft r
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Maybe some *kid* should be hired to install big copper heatsinks and loud-ass fans in these units.
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You're talking about an 11 year old palm... not "state of the art voting machines".
Your Palm is well past it's used by date, these machines are supposed to be purpose built.
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Don't know about ESS but I understand a lot of these machines have been Windows 2000 and Access. Why assume they went to any more trouble junking the hardware together? Just another example of the private sector making a Holy profit, you know.
My greater interest is statistical. How much "drifting" has been for the incumbent in recent years and what are the odds it was chance?
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Re:'Drift' sounds like a rubbish excuse (Score:4, Informative)
Drifting to the left (Score:3, Funny)
My Motorola PDA can stay calibrated for weeks on end, and the touch-screen PC in my hardware store paint department has been calibrated for over a year, but they can't keep a voting machine calibrated for more than a few hours?
Now when the pundits say the electorate is "drifting to the left" we'll know it's not a political shift but just a calibration drift.
No time for a joke (Score:3, Insightful)
The U.S. government is VERY corrupt. For other examples, see The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One [pbs.org] and the Slashdot story EFF Says Obama Warrantless Wiretap Defense Is Worse than Bush [slashdot.org]. There are people in control of the U.S. government who believe in limitless surveillance, dominance of the banks, and killing to make money and ge
Treason (Score:4, Interesting)
however it's not the 70's and every touch screen device i have ever seen holds it's calibration or doesn't need to be calibrated. From ATM's that are exposed directly to outdoor weather to late 90's production eBook readers to the Nintendo DS I have never once seen one lose calibration in any reasonable time and it's rare to need to calibrate at all except when combining a touch sensor to a system not built for touch sensor use.
this is outright election fraud and IMO it is treason and should be dealt with accordingly.
Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do the touch screens always fail in the same way? Was the way the screens fail known when the ballots were designed? My bet is yes and yes. Let's find out! If I'm right then it's election fraud, plain and simple.
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False dichotomy. In this case, greed adequately explains the conspiracy side.
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To be fair, there are some quite poor touch screens out there. I can think of two examples my toshiba e740 occasionally loses calibration generally after the batterys run completely flat. But the other Example is a point of sale (cash register) theres no issues within the POS app but if you want to play around with WIN-CE Calibration is off and recalibrating doesn't seem to help much. Which kinda makes the point that provided the interface is designed well enough a few pixels out will not matter.
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The movie ticket kiosks at the theatre here seem to get miscalibrated all the time. Most people don't use them because of that. On the plus side, once you figure out which way it is miscalibrated, you can use it, and you don't have to wait in line
A small victory against voting machines... (Score:5, Informative)
...happened in Finland last week. A few municipalities tested electronic voting in the last (municipal) elections and when (unsurprisingly) irregularities occurred (232 votes were not counted properly), the results were challenged all the way to the supreme court, which now decided that the elections must be held again. The lawyer representing the appealing parties has said that he doubts that any politician will ever propose electronic voting in this country again.
That outcome is thus quite positive but it would've been even better if the minister responsible for it had accepted her responsibility and resigned like many people demanded her to.
So don't use touchscreens (Score:4, Informative)
Put physical buttons of to the side of the screen to press. How difficult was that?
And yes, the drift excuse sounds like B.S.
Call themselves engineers.... (Score:5, Informative)
Touchscreen calibration? I used to work for a company that built quiz machines and the like for the UK pub industry (circa 2000). Essentially they were simple PC's with a touchscreen (the monitor had a PS2 output).
We used to leave those machines running at various sites for YEARS, and I can't ever remember a calibration problem. And trust me, we'd know because when a customer starts to lose money they let the pub know about it all right. The biggest problem we had was the coin slot mechanism screwing up.
So now you're telling me that almost 10 years later and the calibration in a voting machine can't last A WHOLE GODDAMN DAY? That's service so bad it almost makes me believe in the conspiracy angle!
Re:Call themselves engineers.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would bet $0.15 that the machines are being incorrectly calibrated.
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His point being why is calibration necessary at all if there are touch-screen setups put in bars that work for years without any recalibration needed over the unit's lifespan.
Re:Call themselves engineers.... (Score:5, Interesting)
ALMOST believe the conspiracy?
Geez, what the hell more do you need? A video tape of Diebold executives laughing evilly while cashing cheques?
None of the touch screens I've EVER used... (Score:4, Informative)
has this problem.
Granted, I've only been developing apps for them since about 1991, but I've NEVER seen any "calibration drift".
Heck, if the Client wants to "calibrate" them, I usually have to root around in the menus to find the CAL function. Touch the top right corner...
They just work.
What sort of cheap crap are the voters paying for?
Conspiracy? (Score:2)
Why wouldn't someone want the voting machines to work? William D Howell Sr.
How hard is it to show a confirmation screen? (Score:2)
How difficult would it be to have the user enter his/her vote, and then before the "ballot" is registered, show a confirmation screen, which would then require the voter to hit yes or no?
If an ATM machine can do a decent job with touch screen technology, then why can't these systems?
Sorry, I really don't get it (Score:2)
I simply do not understand the persistence by election officials to use flawed voting methods whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, this is a GO/NO GO issue. ... you can run an election on paper if you just keep the polls a manageable size. So, there's no excuse for not having a fall back method to replace one that does not work.
Apparently with most State Election Officials it's a GO/GO issue with no asterisk, no qualifications, nothing. This just in
Maybe they should just contact the gaming industry ... they
What the fuck kind of excuse is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Drift? Seriously?
You mean that kiosks in airports, malls, restaurants, hotels, atm machines that sit outdoors, my iPhone, my Windows Mobile phone, tablet PCs and god knows what else can be calibrated once and last for years, but these voting machines can't last for 8 hours?
Most traditional touch screens CAN'T drift. They need an initial calibration to align the location of touches to match the display to deal with manufacturing and assembly differences, but they don't actually drift, ever.
WHAT THE FUCK are they doing to get drift in the system? The $2 multitouch video on YouTube shows a system less likely to drift than this shit?
Someone needs to be hung. We need to start instituting criminal punishment for leaders of companies that produce crap like this. There is no accountability anymore because everyone hides behind 'the corp'. That shit needs to end now. We can either do it legally, or wait a little while longer and watch the public start taking the law into their own hands.
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Could always vote by lining all the candidates up, and throwing rocks at everyone except the one you want to vote for. The one left alive is obviously the one who was most favored. The only drift then is if your aim is bad. I think it could work! Vote by stoning.
Pen and fucking paper (Score:2)
Or are "school boards and city official" elections, to damn complicated for Americans to write an X in a few boxes?
Look at Algeria for an example of what can happen (Score:2)
which way? (Score:5, Funny)
So, have we found it more common for the calibration to drift to the right, or to the left ?
Touchscreens drifting in hours? bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
I work in A/V control systems and deal with touchscreens every day. Some are used very heavily - not quite as much as a voting machine on voting day, but probably gets as many touches within a few days time. The need for re-calibration is rare; I'm talking once a year maybe? The worst touchscreen I've ever seen is a the wacom overlay on a Modbook (Macbook repackaged as a touchscreen tablet PC). That POS needs re-calibrated about... once a month. Add other's comments about all the touchscreen kiosks in airports, etc.; same f*ing technology, but they don't need recalibrated every 10 minutes.
There's just no way this isn't a case of either gross negligence / incompetence, or criminal vote rigging.
Does it really matter ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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The issue here is trust. Without a audit/paper trail, the machine could show the mark correctly and *still* register an "incorrect" vote. How hard is it to print a reciept? My ATM gives me a reciept.
If the issue is trust, what is to stop the machine from showing you a fake X *AND* printing you a fake receipt? With a fake bar code that scans for the wrong candidate (even thought it doesn't appear that way) during a recount?
It's not the technology that is untrustworthy: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Proverbs for Paranoids #3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." -- Thomas Pynchon
Using the wrong touch screen technology (Score:3, Insightful)
The capacitive technology is crap. It needs to be calibrated. It was intended to replace a mouse. It is WRONG.
In this application one can use contact-based touch screen technology. Very similar to what's in your keyboard. There is no drift. No calibration. Resolution is low, but who cares? You are not moving a cursor around on a screen, you are picking one of a small number of choices.
Calibrated the ALL the night before? (Score:4, Informative)
They are claiming that the day before, in addition to distributing the machines to the precincts and all of the other tasks, they booted up every one, and then ran it through the calibration routine? I don't buy it. I think they are in CYA mode. If they did really do it, I bet it was done by a volunteer who booted up 10 machines at a time then calibrated them all as fast as he could, and did a really lousy job.
At least in this case it appears to be a result of rampant incompetence. I am convinced that the Diebold machines are programed they way they to facilitate election theft.
These may be the screens mentioned in a lawsuit (Score:4, Informative)
There is a deposition from a lawsuit stating that, IIRC, either the screens or the machines themselves were manufactured in --literally -- a sweatshop in the Philippines. There was excessive heat and moisture. IIRC, the only testing was a shake test; they shook each product and if they didn't hear any loose parts it passed the test.
Our nation is founded on the principle that "...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Both the sellers and the buyers of these touchscreens are attempting to use cheap crap for implementing that principle, i.e., determining the "consent of the governed". Those who allow this to happen should be deeply ashamed.
Re:hard, or what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Two possibilities:
Take your pick
Re:hard, or what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or:
3. Both of the above
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What the... where did my [quote] button go?? :(
Anyhoo:
3. Both of the above
Oh great... can't see the GP post to quote something meaningful.. grr...
Where was I going? Oh yeah:
I was trying to make a clever joke about having incompetent ballot tampering is the only chance third parties had of ever winning.
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You forgot a couple...
5. No voter verification after that ballot box ends up at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
6. There is no election fraud when the candidate/party the squeaky wheel likes wins.
But the machine they show in TFA does suffer from poor interface design. The machines in my precinct...you'd have to miss by an awful lot (meaning ~40% of the entire screen, since I don't think I've ever seen more than two options presented on the screen) to screw it up. You'd then also have to not be able to r
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you'd have to miss by an awful lot ... You'd then also have to not be able to read ...
You overestimate the capabilities of the average voter.
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you'd have to miss by an awful lot (meaning ~40% of the entire screen
I just used the ES&S automark last week (A slightly different machine from the same company). The tolerance of where you need to press is less than the width of my finger. I took a video of this to prove it. http://shultzonline.com/vote/ [shultzonline.com] In the video there are only two candidates, yet they are still right next to each other, and in the video you can clearly see the calibration is off enough to incorrectly select the wrong candidate. You cannot argue that this interface is unacceptable.
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Comprehending what I wrote -- you fail it.
The point is that it's a UI design flaw if a minor calibration error could ever come into play. There's a big difference between a screen that has two possible candidate selections, plus a pgup/pgdn feature to find the other candidates (like the machines in my precinct), and the interface on the machines in TFA.
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Unless you fill it with rocks or bricks, that's just not going to happen. Why? Because ballot boxes are made to be able to float, even when filled with water, to prevent exactly that.
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the house always wins in gambling
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Being someone who lives in Salina, I can vouch for that as well. Please fix.
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Touch screens ARE analog devices and depending on technology may have to be calibrated. I'm sure that for a competitive bid situation they use the cheapest technology they can get away with. Does anyone know what ES&S are using?
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Touch screens ARE analog devices and depending on technology may have to be calibrated. I'm sure that for a competitive bid situation they use the cheapest technology they can get away with. Does anyone know what ES&S are using?
They use commodity serial-interface touchscreens purchased through their Taiwanese parts suppliers. It's a transparent overlay on top of the LCD. ES&S uses a contractor with engineering in Kansas and Taiwan, a purchasing office in Taiwan and a factory in the Philippines. They don't do much of the actual engineering or coding themselves.
The touchscreen calibration routine runs once when the device is powered up and can be run again by anyone with the "supervisor ballot".
And Dreadneck, Smallpond and
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Changes in the environment like temperature can result in variation in the output from the touchscreen.
I have personally used hundreds of different outdoor ATMs with touchscreens. I'm sure there are millions of other people that also use them. Not once have I ever had a significant problem selecting the button I wanted, as long as the touchscreen worked at all. I have also never heard anyone else complaining about touching "Withdrawl" and getting "Deposit" (or similar completely wrong button selection).
I'm also pretty sure that these machines are not calibrated every day. But, even if they were, it really
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How about both, if it was intended we off them for treason, if it was an accident for the sake of humanity. Everybody wins.
Well, almost everyone.