Dude, if a coder couldn’t design a system that counted the numbers *they * wanted, while simultaneuosly printing out what you thought you input, they would have to turn in their Blackberry. In other words, it’s very nice that there’s a paper print out- but so what? If they have really programmed the machines for fraud, your paper copy is only useful if it’s on nice soft & absorbent paper.
This is one of the reasons I love Montana. This morning, I went to the polling place, and told my name to a few folks sitting behind a desk. They looked it up in a big paper binder, and I signed next to it. Then they handed me a paper ballot and a pencil, and directed me to a privacy booth. When I was done, I put it into a big steel box. The only machine involved in the whole process was the elevator to the third-floor polling station. Armageddon could hit, and the voting system wouldn’t be changed one bit.
Infuriating! Fucking brain-dead exasperation! Don’t live anywhere near Denver and it pisses me off!
Don’t see it mentioned in your cite, but surly lefty that I am, my immediate bias is that this happened in one of the less prosperous environs of Denver. Call it a hunch.
What I wonder is, did this woman catch the errors because the voting machines make it easy to catch the errors? Or did she catch them because she went into the voting booth with suspicions about the e-voting machines, and was especially alert for them? Her story made it onto a political blog prety quickly, which suggests to me that she was informed about the issue already and looking for the machine to make a mistake. Would someone who did not already have concerns about the machines pick up on the errors as easily as she did? Did the machine make other errors that aren’t as easily caught? My concerns with electronic voting machines don’t really stem from fears of corruption and conspiracy, so much as the impression that the machines just don’t work very well, and can’t be relied on to give accurate results even absent fraudulent machinations from the candidates.
That’s how they do it in my California district, to. Or at least, that’s how they were doing it about four years ago, which was the last time I showed up at the polling place in person. Nowadays, I mail in my ballot a week prior.
Ha, I just responded to your identical post in the Pit thread. The point is, the collected printouts are a physical record of the actual vote. If you suspect the machine was programmed to alter the count, you can just count the printouts and check whether the totals match.
I voted on the machine this morning and saw how it works. A big checkmark appears next to the name you picked (or at any rate, the name the machine thought you picked) and it gets printed onto a piece of paper behind a transparent panel. It’s as clear as day, unless you’re drunk or have your eyes closed. And if that’s the case, you’re just as likely to make the same mistake with pencil and paper.
OK, but in most areas where a paper copy was available, it was optional. So, all they’d have to count was those who asked for a paper copy. If there is a master paper copy, how do you know that the master is recording your vote correctly?
I don’t know, that’s not how it worked with the machine I voted on. The paper was printed and deposited automatically, behind a locked clear panel so you could see it happen.
It appears to be city-wide. Denver is a Democratic city, so it may have an affect on close state races, but Douglas County Republicans are mulling asking for an extension for their own problems in a Republican stronghold, so maybe it’ll all come out in the wash.
Given that problems are reportedly occurring in both red and blue areas of Colorado, and in both red and blue states, I’m going to stick with my “massive and total incompetence theory” for now.
I just voted. It was easy. D-D-D-D-D-D-L-D-D-D-D-D-D-D
I did vote for a libertarian for ag commissioner. The incumbent is a D and he’s as comfortable as can be with the state’s agribusiness corporate welfare types (or “hard working small family farmers” as they like to call themselves) as any R is ever likely to be, so I wanted to give them a Libertarian to play around with. It’ll never happen, but I was using a Diebold “accountability-free” machine, so who knows who the hell I actually voted for.
