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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

#601

Post by zero_intp »

streptomycin wrote: post #594
zero_intp wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement directly states a comparison between R and D percentages and uses the ambiguous term 'best'. The idea that you can state with any credulity that 2% of the population is 'better' than 15-16% of the population, or that that comment has any value to anyone else is the height of vapid punditry.

That's some cute pedantry, requires some very creative reading to come to that self-righteous interpretation. I find semantic pedantry more vapid than data, though. So check the 2012 results: http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president?hpt=... Yet again, the Republican candidate scores his highest vote share among college graduates, and the Democratic candidate scores his highest vote share among people w…

You have yet to inform us as to how or why this pedantry is useful, relevant, or rewarding. If my interpretation of your connotation or intent is somehow incorrect, your arguments have not materialized.

Re-iterating your mouth noises does not show for the depth of the thought that originated them.

While I critiqued your lack-of-thought construct, you immediately countered with both an ad hominem and appeal to authority.

Good luck out there, you're going to need it.

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

#602

Post by grey-area »

incongruity wrote: post #454
grey-area wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no ambiguity about a spoiled ballot. It's a legitimate protest with a clear outcome - the vote is not counted. A simple system of slips of paper marked by hand and counted by hand works better than anything involving chads, touch screens or electronic counting. Paper ballots are really the best solution we have at present and I'd argue the involvement of as many people as possible in counting and supervision…

Paper ballots are a must, I agree, because they can be counted by hand, but they don't have to be, at least not at first. Electronic counting/scanning of paper ballots can be trusted – it's not that difficult to verify the counting for a small (known) set of test ballots and use the machine to count the rest. If there's doubt, then hand-count... but hand-counts are fallible too – mainly because the human is the weak…

Yes that's true, machine counting would be just as good if the ballots are kept and can be verified later.

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

#603

Post by stevenwei »

Anjin wrote: post #41
llambda wrote: post #37

What I've read[1][2] in regard to this incident is that it is most likely a calibration issue: i.e. the touch screen is improperly calibrated and as a result is not selecting the proper region of the screen. Now this is concerning because it likely means other machines could be or are miscalibrated. However the important takeaway here is that this is not some malicious attempt to rig the vote. If that were the case t…

Unfortunately no, if you read what he wrote in the comments of that submission: Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active area…

That doesn't actually mean anything. Resistive and infrared touchscreens (especially cheaper ones) can have all sorts of hilarious calibration errors where part of the screen area works perfectly fine, but other parts of the screen are off completely.

I used to work on kiosk software for restaurants. At the start of every day we had to go through all of the touchscreens in the restaurant and calibrate them. Sometimes they would lose their calibration halfway through the day and need to be recalibrated multiple times.

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

#604

Post by huhtenberg »

sturmeh wrote: post #583
artursapek wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for being the voice of reason. It's a fucking calibration error. I hate sensationalism like this.

How is it a calibration error? He clearly says he tested for calibration error, and it wasn't the case. This is of course, we assume he's not lying.

Having slept on this, I think he's lying.

For such a major accusation, one would think to video all other choices working as expected, and only Obama being an exception. The simplest explanation for what he showed is a calibration error, but the matter is dramatically сomplicated if you take what he has to say for granted.

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

#605

Post by stevenwei »

sturmeh wrote: post #583
artursapek wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for being the voice of reason. It's a fucking calibration error. I hate sensationalism like this.

How is it a calibration error? He clearly says he tested for calibration error, and it wasn't the case. This is of course, we assume he's not lying.

He doesn't have to be lying, just unaware of how touchscreen calibration works. With resistive and infrared touchscreens, some portion of the screen can be miscalibrated or faulty even if other portions of the screen work correctly.

His "calibration test" doesn't actually demonstrate anything. Having some portion of the screen work incorrectly, while other sections of the screen work correctly, is entirely consistent with a calibration error for these types of touchscreens.

The only way to eliminate calibration error as the cause here is to: 1) re-calibrate the screen and see if the touch mappings are still incorrect. 2) if they are, the touchscreen itself could be faulty, so the next step is to replace the touchscreen with a known working version, and see if the issue persists.

Obviously there's no way he could have performed either of those steps, so there's no way he could eliminate calibration error as the cause.

Source: I've developed touchscreen kiosks in restaurants for years, and this behavior is entirely consistent with the miscalibrated touchscreens I've seen in the past. Often (generally with crappy touchscreens), a screen will hold its calibration for some period of time, and then stop working correctly until it's recalibrated once again.

Now, whether it's a good idea to use these types of crappy touchscreens in electronic voting machines is an entirely different question...

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

#606

Post by stevenwei »

TwistedWeasel wrote: post #47
llambda wrote: post #37

What I've read[1][2] in regard to this incident is that it is most likely a calibration issue: i.e. the touch screen is improperly calibrated and as a result is not selecting the proper region of the screen. Now this is concerning because it likely means other machines could be or are miscalibrated. However the important takeaway here is that this is not some malicious attempt to rig the vote. If that were the case t…

The consumer electronics industry has shipped hundreds of millions of touch screens in the last few years and i've not seen a single article complaining that they opened up their new tablet/phone to find it mis-calibrated and that their touches were off my such a huge margin. Why are voting machines apparently subject to calibration problems that other touch screen devices are not?

The touchscreens you see in modern consumer electronic devices are capactive touchscreens. I think the iPhone was the first major device to ship with a capactive touchscreen, prior to that, resistive and infrared touchscreens were a lot more common (and cheaper).

If you've ever interacted with a touchscreen at an ATM, mall kiosk, or airport kiosk, it's likely that they were resistive or infrared based, and more susceptible to calibration errors.

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

#607

Post by lostlogin »

jcurbo wrote: post #322
eli wrote: 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.

This entire thread is interesting because our typical programming instincts - making sure user actions are linked to user desires via digital signatures, etc - get completely thrown out the window when you talk about voting and secret ballots. You need to be able to ensure the voter is able to make their choice independently, without pressure or publicity - but you can not perform any kind of integrity check that wou…

Nicely said. I have been pondering the comments and wondering if there is an over riding problem. From my (less than perfect) understanding of the US electoral system, it is possible to have a president elected who has been voted for by considerably less than half of valid votes. This part of the systems seems more broken to a non-US citizen than a (hopefully) single voting machine being caught on camera breaking.

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

#608

Post by stevenwei »

realrocker wrote: post #191

Calibration!! Really?? Any software/hardware developer here worth his/her salt would agree that can't be it. Let's see what could have happened: 1) The Y axis of the screen was maladjusted 2) Touch Sensitivity of the screen was reduced due to incorrect settings 3) Touch area had hair/dust/oil on it. But if you read the voter's story it happened only for Obama's field. Don't they have independent watchdogs looking aft…

Disagree. I've worked with resistive/infrared touchscreens for many years and this behavior is entirely consistent with touchscreen calibration errors, especially with cheap/crappy touchscreens. See my other comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752605

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

#609

Post by stevenwei »

dalore wrote: post #44
citricsquid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article doesn't even hint that this might be done on purpose. Altering is an action, not something passive. If a machine is altering votes then it must be doing that intentionally. What is happening here is the person interacting with this machine is interacting in such a way that makes the machine believe he is pressing elsewhere on the screen. The title reads as if the machine is doing something, the reality…

Except the guy is a programmer, understands calibration and tested other elements on the screen. http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/12q6wu/2012_voting... > I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first…

His test is far from conclusive. Some subsection of the screen working incorrectly while other sections work correctly is entirely consistent with a miscalibrated or faulty touchscreen.

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

#610

Post by bruceboughton »

danielweber wrote: post #405
incongruity wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bur…

Read the link in tokenadult's post about Minnesota. Paper is hardly easy to count when you get to the dolts who don't know how to mark a ballot. What does it mean when the guy marks a vote for every question but also writes "LIZARD PEOPLE" in every write-in ballot spot? Lots of people really don't like the fact that the senator is chosen based on how 3 people sit down and decide what that means, or whether this chad…

>> What does it mean when the guy marks a vote for every question but also writes "LIZARD PEOPLE" in every write-in ballot spot?

Spoiled ballot. Vote not counted. What else would it mean?

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