Live data from Hacker News

Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

thenextweb.com

301–310 of 659 posts

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#301

Can someone explain me like a five year old (european) how it is that... You put a man on the moon, flew the space shuttle, have a rover sending holiday pics from mars, not to mention, your entire computer industrie.... But you can not make or agree a voting machine that actually works beyond reasonable doubt?!

The issue is that we have several voting machines that DO work.

They're just not what certain states bought. Were these bought for nefarious reasons? Perhaps. Are they bad even if they were just purchased due to incompetence/graft? Yes.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#302
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you never hear about these things in your own country that means that apparently no one there cares. Or that they don't happen...

Must not be a programmer if you actually believe bugs don't exist.

Are there problems ("bugs")? Sure. Are there problems similar in magnitude to the 'shenanigans' in the United States of America being discussed by morsch? Quite possibly not.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#303
post #244
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats have tried to increase the length of time early voting happens, increase the hours, and increase the number of voting locations. All of these changes make it easier for people who were on the fence about voting to vote. They do this because they know that people who might or might not vote are much more likely than not to vote Democratic. Thus adding these people to the vote advantages themselves and disadv…

Vote manipulation? Yes. Just what we need? Definitely. I cannot think of a scenario where having more people in a representative sample would be worse than having less.

I can. If you can't be bothered to vote your vote isn't needed. You have no clue what you are voting for and you can not, in any conceivable way, make a reasonable judgment of who to vote. I cannot think of a scenario where having more people, who have no clue about why or who they are voting on (and this is sadly the vast majority of people), will be better than having less.

It looks good if have there are a lot of people participating but you have not gained anything if those that voted did not have the slightest of interest in it.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#304
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exit polls are like a canary in a coal mine. They can show evidence of manipulations that might have happened. If an investigation finds that no such manipulation seems to have occurred, then no harm is done. Unfortunately current US elections are unauditable because voting machines DO NOT produce any kind of verifiable voting trail. Furthermore the apparent conclusion of the US media is that past discrepancies are e…

Unfortunately current US elections are unauditable because voting machines DO NOT produce any kind of verifiable voting trail Please stop. The machine in the video (at least when deployed in NC) absolutely has a paper receipt that gets printed every time a button is pressed.

NY also has a paper trail. I voted this morning. I filled out a form, using a pen to fill in the circles for my votes, much like standardized tests. I then fed that form into a machine. The polling station kept the form, which is the paper trail for the electronic record.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#305
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. There are a couple of other papers as well. The problem is they are far too complicated to explain to voters which makes them unlikely to be adopted and unlikely to be trusted. Having a secure vote is obviously the primary goal, but having a vote that people trust is pretty important too.

Here's one FROM Romney to Obama 'DOZENS' OF COLORADO ROMNEY VOTERS CLAIM MACHINES CHANGED VOTES TO OBAMA http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/03/Dozens-of...

Do you have anything more than that? I can't accept an unsourced story from that site at face value given its past editorial failures.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#306
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing access to voting isn't a form of voting manipulation, because the whole point of voting is to provide voting opportunities to every person who is eligible to vote.

Democrats are trying to change the voting rules because they believe that doing so will make the vote come out the way that they want it to. If you don't call this voting manipulation, what do you call it? I agree that it is nicer than trying to disenfranchise people, but the intent is the same. And I believe that the people pushing the rule would be doing the opposite if that's what their poll data suggested would b…

It's no more "voting manipulation" than get-out-the-vote campaigns, sending out advertisements, or political campaigns in general.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#307
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not! It's a secret ballot -- you cannot have any way to prove which candidates you voted for.

What about, e.g. taking a video of your vote as the original Reddit poster did? I think this verification may already be a reality. The alternative is to disallow any form of verification, as with the Reddit poster, but then we lose the ability to perform checks on the voting procedure, and would never have known about this current anomaly. What's missing, though, is the proof that who you voted for is who the vote w…

that's naive. only bugs in the voting machine acts like that

real, proper, election manipulation wouldn't be so obvious to the voters

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#308
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exit polls are like a canary in a coal mine. They can show evidence of manipulations that might have happened. If an investigation finds that no such manipulation seems to have occurred, then no harm is done. Unfortunately current US elections are unauditable because voting machines DO NOT produce any kind of verifiable voting trail. Furthermore the apparent conclusion of the US media is that past discrepancies are e…

Unfortunately current US elections are unauditable because voting machines DO NOT produce any kind of verifiable voting trail Please stop. The machine in the video (at least when deployed in NC) absolutely has a paper receipt that gets printed every time a button is pressed.

Fine for that machine.

According to http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/computer-s... a quarter of the country in this election will use paperless machines. No paper trail at all.

According to polls, the election will be decided by swing states that are expected to have margins of victory under 4%.

If, hypothetically, the election is decided for Romney in states like Pennsylvania which polls indicated were leaning Democratic on electronic machines where there is no paper trail, will you be inclined to believe that his last minute ads made that a fair win, or would you be inclined to believe that the election was stolen? (Note, the information that Pennsylvania is one of the states without a paper trail is in the article, published today, that I linked to.)

I, personally, would be inclined towards the theory that the election was stolen, and the purpose of his last minute ad buys was to create plausible deniability for the manipulation. If, on the other hand, there was a paper trail and audits verified the count, I would be much more comfortable with that election outcome.

Whether or not this machine is auditable, unauditable voting machines are a real problem.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#309

I know that this will remain at the bottom of this thread, because it doesn't have enough conspiracy theory in it, but does anyone really think that this is actual vote tampering ? I mean, why on earth would you tamper with a voting machine so that it stuffs the ballot, but have it update the UI so that the user can see and report the error? This should fall to the way side of failing basic logic, but it doesn't beca…

But what is the other explanation then?

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#310

This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. If you're in the U.S. I highly reccomend being a poll worker in a contentious district in a swing state if you ever get the chance. I was in a suburb of Denver last election and saw all kinds of shenanigans, from people pulling fire alarms to clear out the polling places to people walking aaround with laptops "checking voter registration" (actually just lying to people to g…

Votes changing From Romney to Obama in Colorado http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/03/Dozens-of...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4750429
Post reply on HN