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Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

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

#381

Post by briandear »

logjam wrote: post #230
btilly wrote: 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…

Clearly, allowing easier access to voting is evil. No, definitely we should make it harder for those least able to afford it....working class people... to take time off from work and stand in line to vote. /sarcasm

Polls are generally open 12 hours, plus there's early voting and absentee voting. "Working class" people have no less opportunity to vote than anyone else.

Stop with the class-warfare nonsense.

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

#382

Post by incongruity »

danielweber wrote: post #299
tokenadult wrote: post #189

The system here in Minnesota works much better. All ballots are paper ballots that are indelibly marked by voters. My wife and I voted this morning in our busy precinct in Minnesota, where there are some tight statewide contests about constitutional amendments and perhaps the most contested race for our state's House of Representatives of any electoral district in our state. As usual, we voted by marking bubble-shape…

The machine in question does produce a paper trail (at least when deployed in my state). Computer systems are trying to bring forward all the hidden problems that aren't found until we have to fight about the result and put them right in front of the user. By design, they are going to show more errors, instead of hiding them from the voter. (I shouldn't need to say this, but I'm not saying computer voting systems are…

Computer systems can only produce a paper facsimile of the vote cast – and thus it must be checked, immediately, by the voter to verify that their intentions were recorded and reflected. Further, that paper record must itself be capable of being re-read/re-counted by different hardware easily so that the (invisible) tally of votes can be verified. In the end, you need to essentially produce a paper ballot but you burden the voter with having to check it after already having voted in a different medium. Anything short of that means that electronic votes are ripe for tampering.

Paper ballots as the canonical record can always be: a) recounted on demand while being able to verify original voter intent (to a greater extent than digital or mechanical systems) and b) digitized for redundant storage and securely encrypted.

Therefore, IMHO, if you want to ensure democracy, ballots must: show tampering, be easy to complete, easy to count (and re-count) and quickly deployable/scalable. Scannable paper is the only option that really does all of that well.

From an operations perspective (MBA/Designer here), the bottleneck in the process is the filling out of the ballot, not the scanning/recording (with any electronic/scanning system), so why not make that part scale/parallelize really easily without requiring thousands of dollars of heavy, breakable hardware? Paper is better, all around.

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

#383

Post by briandear »

seanalltogether wrote: post #161
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #140

If there were one aspect of electronic voting I could change it would be the following: allow electronic votes to be reviewed by each individual at a later date, from two independent organizations. Each vote gets sent to two independent electronic counting organizations, and each let you verify your vote after the election, with an (anonymous) confirmation number issued at voting time. If enough people cry foul to ru…

Or just let anyone grab a copy of the database so that any independent organization can host a lookup service so you can verify that your vote went through correctly.

Define an "independent" organization. There's no such thing. All organizations are partisan.

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

#384

Post by pulplobster »

m_myers wrote: post #321
VMG wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is the other explanation then?

Hanlon's Razor would suggest a bug in the hardware or software as the more likely explanation. Unfortunately, when politics are involved, people default to assuming malice far more than they perhaps should.

Even though a bug is not entirely unlikely, a bug which actively favors one candidate over the other is very unlikely.

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

#385

Post by rmc »

VMG wrote: post #309
JoeCortopassi wrote: post #295

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?

That since Romney and Obama are going to each get lots of votes that the touch screen has been completly worn away and is now not very accurate.

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

#387

Post by briandear »

btilly wrote: post #139
Alex3917 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anyone who has been paying attention this election cycle knows about the attempts by both sides to manipulate rules about who can vote, when, in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage each other." Since when have Democrats been passing laws to prevent old white people from voting?

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…

However, Democrats have worked to make it more difficult for the military to vote when deployed.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/09/26/obama-accus...

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

#389

Post by raldi »

JoeCortopassi wrote: post #295

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…

I would have voted for this comment, but because of the implicit plea for votes in the first line, I downvoted it instead.

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

#390

Post by georgemcbay »

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #341
jerf wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have owned a ton of touch screen devices. None of them were miscalibrated, even after years of use. I have used a ton of touch screen devices in public. I've encountered quite a few that were miscalibrated. Public devices put up with abuse that your private devices do not.

Honestly curious - what kind of abuse could cause a calibration error? My kids abuse my iPad pretty heavily but generally smacking on the screen with their hands and fingers a lot but I still have never seen it mis-calculate a touch.

iPads used capacitive touchscreens which aren't prone to the same sorts of calibration issues that resistive touchscreens are.

I don't know much about electronic voting machines but I wouldn't be surprised if they mostly used resistive touchscreens (which are historically much cheaper to produce).

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