Voting Machines Routinely Failing Nationwide

palegray.net writes "Voting machines in several critical swing states are causing major problems for voters. A Government Accountability Office report and Common Cause election study [PDF] has concluded that major issues identified in the last presidential election have not been corrected, nor have election officials been notified of the problems. How long can we afford to trust our elections to black box voting practices? From the article: 'In Colorado, 20,000 left polling places without voting in 2006 because of crashed computer registration machines and long lines. And this election day, Colorado will have another new registration system.'"

Where exactly are these "voting machines"?

[cashman73]

So, where exactly are these voting machines I keep hearing about? I have voted in every election (even in off-Pres years), and in several states (Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, and Pennsylvania), and I have yet to use one of these Diebold (or anyone else's) voting machines. I've used the punch-card system, with the "hanging chads" and all, although most of the time it's simple "fill-in-the-ovals". So, maybe I just haven't been lucky enough to live in a precinct with fancy-shmancy voting machines,... or maybe I'm still living in the 19th century and no one told me?

Also, when are we going to be able to vote on the internets? You'd think they could work that out by now, right? Maybe the real reason we can't vote by internet is because the politicians know that it would increase the vote of the well-connected (and usually liberal) student population, and they really don't want to do that,...

There is a solution...

[nadamsieee]

http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ [openvotingconsortium.org]

Re:Easy Solution...

[MikeDirnt69]

Here in Brazil we use voting machines for more than 10 years and it works pretty good. Also, the new version we're using this year is running over linux.

Believe or not, it works without frauds in the 3rd world.

Re:Freedom and Democracy EPIC FAIL

[Tridus]

Its honestly baffling sitting up here in Canada, looking down there and trying to understand how this keeps getting screwed up year after year.

Up here, federal elections are handled by a federal body (Elections Canada), and are done the same way everywhere in the country. Its all standardized. We use a pencil. The whole thing is over pretty fast, and all these problems just don't come up.

Considering how much more often Americans vote, and how many more things there are to vote for, its hard to figure out why the process hasn't been perfected down there yet. If anything it seems to be getting worse.

Re:Voting machines

[thedonger]

If you vote on Nov 11 your vote definitely will not count.

athens, tn

[i.r.id10t]

Strangely enough, the last armed revolt against the government in the US was in Athens, Tn. in *1946*. The cause? Voting issues...

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1985/2/1985_2_72.shtml [americanheritage.com]

Not that I am advocating it, but it will be interesting to see just how PO'd folks will get...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Freedom and Democracy EPIC FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

India too has a neutral constitutional organization that is devoted full time to organizing and regulating all the various state-level and national elections. They also have support of various government machinery (including the police and para-military) at their disposal during the elections to do whatever it takes for a free and fair election. Their operation is transparent, have adopted electronic voting in the past decade and having been running without a glitch for years.

Re:Freedom and Democracy EPIC FAIL

[Abcd1234]

What I find truly bizarre is this belief that adding more technology to the problem will fix it. As you say, here in Canada we use simple paper ballots marked by hand. Once voting is complete the votes are hand counted. The process is simple, transparent, and reliable.

The American system, by contrast, seems like an exercise in complexity for the sake of complexity. Yeah, there's more people voting, but that just means there's more people who can do the counting. Yeah, the ballots are more complex, but there's no reason why you can't design a straightforward ballot that's easy to fill in and easy to count. Yeah, there's the whole states rights issue, but given the problems in the electoral system, I sincerely doubt it would be hard for the federal government to get a majority of the states onboard with a standardized system. There really seems to be no excuse, other than sheer incompetence. It's truly strange.

Re:Voting machines

[smoker2]

Try describing it using money. If she has $10 and buys something costing $5, if the till says she gets $4 change then the machine is wrong. Obviously.
The voting machine tells you things via a process you can't and more importantly aren't allowed to independently verify. But the results seem to be wrong. The machine must be examined to see where the problem lies. They won't let you. How long would you argue in the store that the till was wrong ?

Re:Voting machines

[pjameson]

I doubt it's a majority, however I know when we had our primary elections in my precinct, we had poll workers trying to get us to use the voting machines. When I said no, one of the other workers asked why the first wasn't getting more people to use the voting machine. The response was, surprisingly, that most people said they didn't want to use it because they didn't trust it to be accurate. Only anecdotal evidence, but it gave me a bit of hope that maybe other, normal citizens are aware of the problems with the electronic voting machines.

Re:Voting machines

[Mr. Sketch]

Actually, in many cases, absentee ballots aren't counted. They are only counted if there exists a spread between the first and second place for an issue that is less than the number of absentee ballots received. Otherwise, they're ignored since they can't affect the outcome.

Re:Easy Solution...

[xhrit]

>And since there is no thing such as '2nd world' and we're definitely not 1st world, yes, we are a 3rd world country. :) But there IS such a thing as '2nd world' countries. 'First world' is 1980's newspeak for western bloc; 'second world' is eastern bloc. Third world countries are countries being fought over in proxy wars by the eastern and western bloc powers.

It basicly comes down to if you are using f16s or migs.