Touch Screen Voting Trouble in Florida

usn2fsu03 writes "Here we go again with another election controversy in South Florida. Touch screen voting was used in a State House election that was won by twelve votes. Unfortunately, there were 134 people who went through the process of checking in to vote, but either did not vote or cast a vote that was not counted. Without a paper trail it is anyone's guess as to what those voters' intentions were. Obviously, there is work to be done in the Election Supervisor's office before November comes around."

It was the psychics

[fruey]

They just touched the screen with their whole palm, and expected it to sense who they wanted to vote for :)

Push the VOTE button!

[KirkH]

If they can't figure out to push the VOTE button to count their selection, maybe they shouldn't be voting anyway...

That's it....

[moitz]

Florida is not allowed to vote in the next federal election. Bad Florida! Bad! Go to your room!

-moitz-

Re:That's it....

[David24Wark24v2]

Flordia. (can i get a 5:funny just for saying that?)

Re:So what?

[aborchers]

12 votes, 134 votes, what's the difference?

-122

Re:Why is this so hard to get right?

[Kenja]

-Voter walks into botth, gets confused by the curtain, ends up out side the both, gets it right on the third try.
-Voter touches the button, gets the one they where aiming for on the second try.
-Voter forgets to click the "VOTE" button that commits their choice.
-Voter tackles the curtain problem again, getting out of the booth on only the second try.
-Voting machine does nothing becuase its only as smart as its users.

Re:electronic voting sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

As a loyal slashbot, I don't know what position to take on this yet. Tonight, I will go through and get all my opinions from the +5 moderated comments in this thread, and will laugh derisively at the unmoderated and downmodded opinions, as they are clearly foolish and wrong.

Electro-Elections

[AndroidCat]

Election Systems & Software, [..], believes that some voters failed to push the "vote" button at the conclusion of the ballot -- akin to hitting the "send" button to dispatch an e-mail.

Hit the vote button to turn off the voltage on the door to the voting booth. Election, electricity. Vote, voltage. There, that should be simple enough to remember.

What they really need to do....

[beakburke]

is to provide a copy of Voting for Dummies at each voting booth. Or they could just use a machine the prints a final, easy to read, ballot. Imagine that.

Re:electronic voting sucks

[I'm Spartacus!]

And I suppose you want to count those votes by hand, too? I can just see it...

"102,604 ... 102,605 ... 102,6. Uh? Crap!!!
1 ... 2 ... 3 ..."

NO, NO, NO

[GeekWade]

You can't do that, people might feel peer pressure when they see the smudges and scratches all over one candidates name. That would not be fair! Just imagine you are in the booth and the weight of thousands before you bearing down upon you to just touch the icky spot on the screen just like they did... How disturbing...

-Wade

Re: Or use the VOTE wizard!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the vote wizard. This is where you can make your selection for President of the United States. Remember that many others are voting and your selection may not match the final choice for President of the United States.

What would you like to do?

• Vote Democratic (Decrease my own personal responsibility but raise everybody's taxes)
• Vote Republican (Keep more of my own income but increase my own personal responsibility)
• Help with understanding these options (I live in Florida)

Secret Electronic Ballot Code Revealed

[dnahelix]

if (vote=="Democrat") {
vote=null;
}

Technology can solve this.

[alan_dershowitz]

It has been verified that faulty citizen failure has resulted in at least one contested Florida election. It's no surprise. Some of these citizens have been around since the '20s! They cost a fortune to maintain. Clearly we can do better than this.

I recommend replacing them. Shiny new electronic voters would reduce the problem of incorrect vote selection, as well as ambiguous ballots, or the inability to understand clear, spoken or written English. Computers are far better at binary selection than senior citizens, so they should have no problem.

In other news

[Hieremias]

In other news, thousands of Florida citizens went to Vegas for their Spring Break holiday, but when faced with the challenge of putting a coin into a machine and pulling the lever they accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan.

Re:electronic voting sucks

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

That's why we should amend the Constitution to allow only people of, at least, basic intelligence to vote. I mean think about it, if they're not intelligent enough to figure out a system for placing a vote - as complicated as it may be, there are instructions always provided - how much weight do you want to give their opinion on who should be in power?

Re:Technology can solve this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Today's voter doesn't just need to understand clear, spoken or written English; he also has to understand unclear, broken spoken English. This ability will be especially necessary when the General Election Debates roll around.

Close margins...

[JetScootr]

''We always pray for large margins,'' said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore.

Keep using unverifiable voting machines and you'll get your wish. G W will win by a landslide this time.

Re:idiot voters

[Pionar]

Thank you for your vote for the Democratic Party.

(Before people start flaming, that was a J-O-K-E.)

Florida voting

[56ksucks]

It's so bad in Florida now I think the only way to make it work again is to give voter's a crayon so they can circle a picture of the person they like with the name below the picture.

Re:That's it....

[shawn(at)fsu]

I was afraid when I took my job in DC that they would not hire me if they found out about my horrible secret. I, ladies and gentlemen, lived in Florida and voted in the 2000 presidential election.

(My poll location was on campus and we didn't have any problems)

Re: Or use the VOTE wizard!

[Doc Ruby]

Vote Republican, hope to cash in on the ripoff of everybody "else", deny any personal responsibility when confronted, and get screwed with practically all "the rest of us" when the politico gets power, and doesn't need you anymore within your delusional event horizon. Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?

How DARE you deflect my flame with reason?!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddamit, experts agree that flames aren't required to be reaonable or logical! In fact, they work better if they aren't.

Bush won

[Stevyn]

Actually I believe the press did a hand count and they concluded that Bush really one. So I guess even though Gore one the "paaaaahhhhpular vote," he didn't win the one that really matters.

And the electoral vote does matter to equally represent people otherwise canidates would only campaign in large cities and those bumpkins in the midwest and the south would never been considered or cared about.

Re:The issue of None Of The Above

[OMEGA Power]

For the sake of discusson, assume an election is held with Larry, Moe, and Curly as candidates

So we're discusing the 2000 Presidential Election here, right?