Until those conducting all elections can guarantee at least a 95 percent accuracy rate with touch screen or opti-scan(Or further in the future, the Internet..), all elections should be conducted with paper ballots, and MUST BE counted by hand. Period. The Brad Blog. Excerpts:
New paper ballot optical-scan computer tabulator systems used to tally millions of votes in New York --- as well as "swing states" such as Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin --- do not tally votes correctly. That stunning admission comes courtesy of a new report released by the private company which manufactures, sells, services and programs the systems which are now believed to have mistallied tens of thousands of ballots in New York in 2010.
The votes of more than ten million voters could be affected by a newly revealed failure in the voting systems set for use in those four states in this year's Presidential election, and in more than 50 different jurisdictions in Wisconsin during next month's historic recall elections.
Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), the largest e-voting machine company in the U.S. and the maker of the paper ballot op-scan tally systems in question, have confirmed that their systems may overheat when used over several hours (for example, during an election!), and that they then may mis-tally and/or incorrectly discard anywhere from 30% to 70% of votes scanned by the machines.
The only way to know that a hand-marked paper ballot had been mistallied by the system would be to examine the ballots by hand to assure that the computer had read and recorded the voters' selections correctly. (So why not just go ahead and do it right the first time?)
Really? Machines designed for elections and elections only can actually overheat during that 12 to 14 hour period? Thank God they don't have to be used two days in a row and they've got a two year fucking break between gigs! Can you imagine the chaos raining down on society if Slurpee machines and ATM's performed accordingly? Not to mention the whole Anybody-can-hack-this-system-in-under-five-minutes, thing.
Anybody, including monkeys, theoretically..
Is it really a mistake when the companies making the mistake keep profiting from that easily correctable mistake? (Thanks to Bart Cop for the thought articulation..)
New paper ballot optical-scan computer tabulator systems used to tally millions of votes in New York --- as well as "swing states" such as Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin --- do not tally votes correctly. That stunning admission comes courtesy of a new report released by the private company which manufactures, sells, services and programs the systems which are now believed to have mistallied tens of thousands of ballots in New York in 2010.
The votes of more than ten million voters could be affected by a newly revealed failure in the voting systems set for use in those four states in this year's Presidential election, and in more than 50 different jurisdictions in Wisconsin during next month's historic recall elections.
Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), the largest e-voting machine company in the U.S. and the maker of the paper ballot op-scan tally systems in question, have confirmed that their systems may overheat when used over several hours (for example, during an election!), and that they then may mis-tally and/or incorrectly discard anywhere from 30% to 70% of votes scanned by the machines.
The only way to know that a hand-marked paper ballot had been mistallied by the system would be to examine the ballots by hand to assure that the computer had read and recorded the voters' selections correctly. (So why not just go ahead and do it right the first time?)
Really? Machines designed for elections and elections only can actually overheat during that 12 to 14 hour period? Thank God they don't have to be used two days in a row and they've got a two year fucking break between gigs! Can you imagine the chaos raining down on society if Slurpee machines and ATM's performed accordingly? Not to mention the whole Anybody-can-hack-this-system-in-under-five-minutes, thing.
Anybody, including monkeys, theoretically..
Is it really a mistake when the companies making the mistake keep profiting from that easily correctable mistake? (Thanks to Bart Cop for the thought articulation..)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment