Touch-Screen Voting Snags Continue

micromoog writes "New touchscreen voting machines caused problems last night in the suburbs of Washington D.C.. Several machines failed and had to be rebooted, and nine were actually removed from the site, repaired, and returned, in violation of election laws. The machines also failed to report their results correctly due to network problems. At least one lawsuit is pending. Interesting quote: 'County elections officials said it was the slowest performance in memory for counting votes on election night.'" Read on for more on how the current crop of electronic voting machines are faring.

Not every electronic voting machine misstep comes from Diebold; reader zznate points out that the Virginia machines came from Advanced Voting Solutions (dcw3 butts in: "The slogan on their home page really gives you a warm fuzzy: 'Helping Shape American History for over one hundred years.'"), as well as that the EFF won a decision for an accelerated court date of November 17 in their attempt to stop Diebold from shutting down sites that make the infamous memos available. Let's all hope this is the first in a series of many wins for the EFF against the Diebold folks and crappy e-voting schemes in general. Have you donated lately?"

Reader meadowreach writes points out more trouble on the other coast: "From news.com: 'As voters in California go to the polls, the state is launching an investigation into alleged illegal tampering with electronic voting machines in a San Francisco Bay Area county.' Diebold upgrades software without letting the state know? How reassuring."

Generic Guy writes "CNN is running a story about California not certifying the Diebold voting machines and instead opening an investigation into the use of uncertified systems. Maybe there is still hope for democracy in the U.S."

And from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Peter Desnoyers writes "Cambridge uses an optical scanner system, where you fill out SAT-style ovals with a pen and the election officer feeds them into a scanning machine. From last night's preliminary results on the Cambridge website:

'In two precincts at 7:55 and 7:59pm the memory cards reached capacity. To ensure that every ballot was counted , the Election Commission has decided to rerun the ballots for 9-1, Lexington Avenue Fire House and 11-3, Churchill Avenue. We expect that it will take between one to two hours.'

I interpret this to mean that they took all the paper ballots out of the box and ran them back through the reader. (with a bigger memory card?) In the mean time, voters were able to continue voting and no votes were lost."

Rebooting the voting machine

[Anonymous Coward]

"Aww man, Windows crashed again. We probably lost 3000 votes due to the reboot."

"Don't worry about it, 3000 votes isn't enough to make a difference!"

This is a non-issue

[Hard_Code]

Really, you guys are getting all worked up over nothing. Polls clearly show:

Americans in favor of unregulated electronic voting: 25%
Americans in favor of strict auditing and accounting of electronic voting systems: -75%.

So clearly this is nothing to get bothered about.

A solution that cant fail.

[blanks]

Line the two (or more) candidates next to one another, voters stand in line.

Each voter gets to walk up and hit the person they are against winning to, aka the one they do not want to win. Last man standing wins the election.

Re:A solution that cant fail.

[jareds]

No wonder Schwarzenegger won California!

Coming soon...

[mishehu]

...to a cemetery near you in Chicago! Now the dead can vote, even earlier and more often!

Hmm...

[Kedisar]

I predict for the 2004 election, there's just going to be 2 buttons:

Bush.

Please send me on a rocket to the moon to work in a rock goulag.

And then Iraq will invade US and say they're liberating us from a leader who always wins. ;)

Re:What's wrong with

[Greedo]

My idea (as noted in a previous article about this subject) is to use touch-pad voting machines that print a paper ballot that would then be scanned. In the event of a recount (or a dispute with the e-voting machine) these ballots could be counted by hand.

Hey, how about a touch-pad voting machine, that prints an empty paper ballot, which you then fill in by hand, and then put it through a scanner?!

Foolproof, I tell you!

Re:Jebus jumped up christ

[Anonymous Coward]

Locked box is taken away for malfunction. Replaced with new and improved locked box.

Its so bloody simple its complicated

[t_allardyce]

e voting could have been implemented decades ago, and they probably would have come up with a better name for it. NASA uses old proccessors for some systems because they are simple and have been tried and tested for years. e voting isnt about pushing the edge of what technology can do its about making the most an effecient, secure, easy to use system without blowing the bank or having anything to do with any party.

Re:What's wrong with

[IM6100]

I'm not sure what you mean about 'enormous risk.'

Elections in Chicago, for example, that are conducted with complicated mechanisms aren't risky. They're a sure thing proposition for the people running the election.