States report early e-voting glitches

[allemand]

Thursday, 28 October 2004
States report early e-voting glitches
by Dan Verton, Computerworld
Touch-screen bugs, laptop crashes and server problems crop up in pre-election day voting

With less than a week to go before the US presidential election, dozens of voters in Florida may have already been disenfranchised as a result of technical glitches in the computers supporting the state's early voting process.

<...>

Of the 666 incidents reported in Florida, 33 have been linked to alleged voting machine malfunctions in Broward, Duval, Lee, Marion, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach, Sarasota and Volusia counties.

<...>

Will Doherty, executive director of the San Francisco-based Verified Voting Foundation, said despite Florida's assertion that the malfunctions of the laptops handling voter registrations were minor, his organisation is aware of dozens of voters who were turned away from the polls "because of that minor system crash". Doherty also said there have been multiple reports related to touch-screen calibration problems. Some voters have reported that when they touched the screen next to their candidate's name the screen highlighted the opposing candidate, according to Doherty.

<...>

In President George W Bush's home state of Texas, some Travis County and Austin County voters complained of touch-screen voting systems that marked a vote for Bush even though they voted Democratic across the board. In Houston, only five voting machines out of approximately 20 were operating, causing long lines and forcing some voters to leave polling places without voting.

More:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/index.cfm?go=news.view&news=4247

[acmavm]

1. Taxpayer money paid for those machines. Now it's time to go after

Diebold for the fraud that they've laid on us. Not only is their product 'defective', and I know it's intentional, they ripped us off for millions (all over the country). Time to get these people.

[ixion]

2. from the evidence thus far, bbv is a scam and should be removed

in lieu of a paper ballot until a reliable, secure and ACCURATE voting machine is available.

Right now, all you've got are essentially republican voting machines: it doesn't matter who you vote for, because the defaults are all for repug candidates. :-(

[Mountainman]

3. This will never be corrected

Persons should be permitted to sue the states that disenfranchise them.

[Peanut Gallery]

4. Heard on AAR

That this was reported in Arizona:

"Doherty also said there have been multiple reports related to touch-screen calibration problems. Some voters have reported that when they touched the screen next to their candidate's name the screen highlighted the opposing candidate..."

Prior to submitting your vote, the system allows you to erase it if it's not what you wanted and re-check the appropriate candidate. In some cases it took people several attempts to produce the vote they wanted.

That is unbelievable. It's also unbelievable that a paper trail was not required by law for electronic voting.

And didn't the voting machine companies bother to test the software before releasing it? Are voters expected to be the beta testers? If the software company I work for did business like that they'd be out of business.

[Zorra]

8. It's not really unbelievable. Republicans fought for these unreliable

machines every step of the way, despite the fact that the use of these machines is illogical, unreasonable, and anti-democratic.

Republicans know full well that they did not have a prayer in this presidential election and in many congressional races, and that the very existence of the republican party in the US is contingent upon the continual perpetration of voter fraud.

If republicans did not cheat, the party would be history.

[Flammable Materials]

5. "666 incidents"

If I were still a Fundie ...

:wow:

[Ducks In A Row]

6. Other states seriously need to copy Oregon's success with

vote-by-mail.


it's all working great here, and we have lots of observers watching the workers through every step of the way.

[sandnsea]

7. I know

But when I suggested that the other day, somebody freaked out on me about ballots being thrown away. Well, criminy, if you're worried, go to the election office and hand it straight to them personally. We have paper ballots that are used for hand recounts, voting is fast and convenient, makes the most sense to me. I bet it's even cheaper.