Voting Machine Problems In (Where Else?) Florida
from the but,-of-course... dept
While there have been sporadic reports here and there of electronic voting problems, the bigger problems are now coming out. Apparently, down in Florida, someone forgot to plug the machines in properly (brilliant!), and the batteries ran out, leading to 37 votes going "missing". The details are a bit sketchy at this point, but the idea that a machine might run out of power seems like an obvious possibility to prepare for, and it's stunning (though, unfortunately, not surprising) that these machines appear to have been unable to deal with that.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Yeah
Seriously though human errors do happen, this is right up there with bags of paper ballots going "missing" or bursting into flame or whatever.
Ultimately if done right electronic voting should be the better data collection tool. Yes we need a paper trail, but come on they ran for how many hours not being plugged in? That is actually sort of impressive that they had that level of redundancy... But stil how could votes be lost? Off/on/standby/suspend etc, should have no middle ground either the machine can collect data or not.
I still don’t understand why Florida is allowed to vote on anything national at all clearly they have demonstrated that their process has been horrible corrupted at this point.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Maybe it's the techie's fault
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Maybe it's the techie's fault
And cut Florida some slack. They're bad paper-hole punchers, so its fitting that they suck at plugging stuff in too.......
But seriously, I can't believe this is the only voting flaw in the country. I'm betting someone else did something similar with an e-voting machine in another state.
And finally, these things LOOK like self-containing units to the layman, so why should he think otherwise?
[ link to this | view in thread ]