BREAKING NEWS Election night computer software meltdown in Franklin County, Cols. OH

[babsbunny]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2011/1910

November 11, 2011

On election night 2011 during the evening and into the next morning, Franklin County pollworkers contacted the Free Press telling the paper that they were unable to make the electronic voting machines print out precinct-level results as required by law. This prevented pollworkers from posting election totals at the polling sites at the end of the night.

One pollworker of 35 years reported that "programming errors" had prevented "many precincts" in Franklin County from being able to print their totals for display on the windows of the voting locations."

A concerned citizen also wrote that he was aware of "an unknown number of Franklin County precincts which could not print out their precinct totals last night, due to a 'glitch.' These precincts included mine, where the results were not posted inside the window of the shelter house, as has been customary every preceding election I've lived here."

[babsbunny]

1. Thank You Dr. Bob!!!

:hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi:

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, babsbunny.

[femrap]

3. Paper and pencil/pen

are so much better. Cheaper. No machines to maintain. No warehouses to rent to store the machines. The Rich boyz are making big $$$$ off these fucking machines.

These machines are A WASTE OF TAXPAYER'S MONEY, KASHIT!

[markpkessinger]

7. I agree...

I remember a time when most precincts in the country were hand-counted. The only real difference was that you might have had to wait a day or two (or sometimes a little longer) to get final results. Seems like a rather small price to pay ...

[femrap]

11. No money to be made

in paper and pencils. I can wait for the results. I believe this is what is done in Germany. There are Exit Polls so most outcomes are known, but the counting can take up to a week....big deal. You know the TRUE result.

[PoliticAverse]

4. It tends to be hard to test things that only really get used once every 2 years. n/t

[nebenaube]

5. there is no reason for any 'new' programming

That would have resulted in this error... configuration? Yeah, to initialize the ballots but the other code should be identical where ever these types of machines were deployed. The errors, if due to programming should have occured on every one of them.

[trayfoot]

6. Good point!

[markpkessinger]

8. Unfortunately, a lot of people are quite ignorant about the nature of programming n/t

[Doremus]

9. I am telling you right now that if something isn't done in Cuyahoga County next year

we will have another debacle a la '04 Kerry.

We use pen and paper to mark our ballots and then they are scanned into the system with the hard copy retained for backup, recounts or any other purpose. This is an efficient, accurate system implemented by our former SOS Jennifer Brunner who cleaned up the garbage her predecessor, Kenneth 'Hackwell', left us.

Jennifer Brunner is no longer SOS, having lost to a repuke in '10. This past Tuesday our ballots were nearly indecipherable. Unpaginated. Bilingual, with no clear-cut start and end of the other language. Double-sided with no clear instructions to turn the page over. It was painfully obvious that there was no effort left undone to make the text as unreadable as possible.

This was a practice session for next November, of that I have no doubt. The only question I have is where the f)(*&(*^*&% Democratic party is in this supposedly Democratic county. They just never seem to be able to foresee this crap until it's too late. :mad: :mad: :mad:

[ellisonz]

10. We need a federal law banning these machines.

Papers and pens have worked fine for decades.