are we ready this time?
dcdaveAs much as I worry about the integrity of electronic voting machines, a story in the Miami Herald gives me chills. Six years after the 2000 election we still can’t get it right. Apparently Davis voters are seeing Crist pop up on their vote confirmation screens:
[Gary Rudolf] touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.
And it’s not an isolated incident. From the same story:
Mauricio Raponi wanted to vote for Democrats across the board at the Lemon City Library in Miami on Thursday. But each time he hit the button next to the candidate, the Republican choice showed up.
Regardless of party affiliation, vote flipping should be a major concern to everyone in Florida. Write the Times and the Tribune and let them know this is something they need to investigate. Don’t lose your vote.
Tags: election '06, Florida, tampa
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October 30th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Welcome back to the Banana Republic
October 30th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
…and wasn’t this whole touch-screen thing a GOP idea anyway? Talk about things that make you go hmmmm…
October 30th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
The major electronic voting machine manufacturers are GOP-owned or connected. They’ll have to skew a couple of low-value races to Dems so they can say, “Look, the voting machines didn’t favor only Republicans.”
October 30th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Check out the Editorial Page in today’s Tribune. The writer claims his difficulty started when he went to vote for the House seat…..
We need a verifiable paper trail!
October 30th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
There is a story floating around nationally that voting machines are being looked into…
….because Venezuela has some sort of ties to them. Talk about spinning the problem in your favor…
October 30th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
We should vote with ink on our fingers like the Iraqis.
October 30th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Mine worked fine, but there is a perspective issue with touchscreens that I had a problem with too. It happens to me every time I go to Disney and try to use their kiosk to find something. I put my finger over the box as I see it but the screen highlights something right below what I want. I had a couple of my votes do that last week, so I adjusted my finger a bit higher and fixed it. Offhand it seems if somebody is good enough to hack the machines they would be good enough not to show you that your vote was going to the OTHER guy.
October 30th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
I don’t know if a hack is as much of a concern as generally crappy, thoughtless technology.
October 30th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Lowest bidder I guess, it is new tech though it will get better. You just need a standard to measure accuracy by. A paper receipt to make people feel better shouldn’t be a difficult solution.
Old tech didn’t work so good either, hanging chad and all.
A friend suggested simple hand counted ballots. I figure that 300 million people and something like 154 million voters in ‘04 would require 1.5 million counters, good luck at finding that many people willing and able to serve and paying for the infrastructure needed to train, pay, and monitor them.
October 30th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Paper ballots are certainly subject to the same old problems, but they seem preferable to the ease with which one can hack the vote electronically:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ars
October 30th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
new tech? the waitress at my favorite restaurant doesn’t seem to be having glitches with my order when she uses here touchscreen… there has always been a potential for fraud, regardless of the medium, but farming out election equipment to unchecked, half-assed tech companies is not the solution.
November 1st, 2006 at 6:47 am
Oh great! I didn’t check my confirmation screen when i voted. This could have happened to me and I wouldn’t even know.
November 1st, 2006 at 10:15 am
[...] I voted early yesterday. In the recent past, I have used this space to document my voting adventures, as well as my uneasiness with touchscreen voting. This morning my confidence was shaken one step further. [...]
November 1st, 2006 at 11:56 am
I voted absentee. Paper ballots are still the way to go as far as I’m concerned. I think we should all take a vacation to other counties next year so we can all turn in absentee ballots. Then they’ll have to actually count ballots! How awful!