No Need To Vote Early And Often When The E-Voting Machine Counts Your Vote In Triplicate

from the automating-vote-fraud dept

Thu, Nov 16th 2006 12:08pm — Mike Masnick

Remember how the press (and e-voting companies) were telling us there were no major glitches in their equipment this past election? That, of course, was until votes turned up missing in Florida and Arkansas. However, don't fret. We may have found the missing votes. You see, down in Texas, just outside of Austin, the voting machines there were found to have counted each vote three times. This was discovered only after election officials wondered why there were more votes than visitors. In typical e-voting company fashion, the makers of these machines, Election Systems & Software, once again refuses to concede that their machines are the problem, blaming human error in the operators of the machine. Yes, that's right, when their machine counts votes in triplicate, it's not the fault of the machine that should be designed in a way to never let that happen, it's the fault of the users, all of whom had their votes count multiple times. Apparently it never occurred to Election Systems & Software that part of their job in designing the voting machine is to make it impossible for "human error" (or anything else, for that matter) to allow votes to be counted multiple times.

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

19 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Quaker in a Basement, 16 Nov 2006 @ 12:45pm

Sore losers
"See, we counted the votes, counted them again, and then counted them one more time, and still my opponent complains. Talk about a sore loser!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
arrg, 16 Nov 2006 @ 12:49pm

I have to agree
One of the basic design requirements should be that a person can only submit one vote... Otherwise what's the sense in have the whole voting process!?! duuhh That's like someone inventing a lock that reads your finger print. you install the lock someone walks in the door by simply pushing the door open. And the company says: It was human error because they didn't use the fingerprint reader... It's so stupid!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tom, 16 Nov 2006 @ 1:03pm

What's the problem?
I don't see what the complaint is, they have the results recorded in triplicate.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Egat, 16 Nov 2006 @ 1:20pm
  
  Re: What's the problem?
  Mainly it would be that the results have already been tallied using the wrong numbers and every person in the precinct with the bad machines had a triple weight compared to everyone else in Texas. Seems like a bit of a problem to me.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 16 Nov 2006 @ 1:26pm

Its not a bug...
Its a feature!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Aaron, 16 Nov 2006 @ 1:28pm

Very Bad!
This could have been very bad! Imagine if our Governor or Senate race had been really close here in Texas! Those votes outside Autin could have elected Kinky Friedman Governor of Texas!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
try that on for size, 16 Nov 2006 @ 1:52pm

Just how do you make human error impossible?
Do you know anything at all about humans?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- whargoul, 16 Nov 2006 @ 2:59pm
  
  Re: Just how do you make human error impossible?
  Well, you can prevent them from submitting the vote more than once.
  
  Do you know anything about computers?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ron (profile), 16 Nov 2006 @ 1:56pm

S'posed ta work that way
See, it has to do with cross checking. Ya take 3 buckets. Put the total number of votes into each of the buckets. Divide the total number of votes in the first bucket by 3. That's the actual number of votes. Divide the number of votes in the second and third buckets each by 3. If bucket 1 equals bucket 2 then the votes are verified. Bucket 3 is in case buckets 1 and 2 don't match.
On a more serious side, don't these flippin' votin' machine folks know how to F*ING TEST??!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 16 Nov 2006 @ 2:55pm
  
  Re: S'posed ta work that way
  Of course they know how to test. Please tell me what that has to do with whether they actually test?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
SimplyGimp, 16 Nov 2006 @ 2:38pm

Human Error
The last 762397596986235 times I've gone to vote it's often been at a local church or school. Somewhere close. I go wait in line and when I get to the machines, I see the officials that are there 'running' the operation. They tend to be a variety mix of seniors and middle-aged citizens of the area, maybe teachers, who knows. The point is, just looking at them I can tell that they'd get lost in a heart-beat so much as turning on a Macintosh. So why the hell are they the ones in 'charge' of watching these vote machines? Please tell me they're not the ones setting them up at least!

But hell, even if they were setup by the company that made them, then left in the hands of the incapable tech'tards, what exactly happens when something goes wrong and it's not on the short check-list left by the manufacturer? Apparently you get your vote counted 3 times.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 16 Nov 2006 @ 2:42pm

??
This would have never happened if they were running MS Vista.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Rico J. Halo, 20 Nov 2006 @ 12:02pm
  
  Vista
  Im running Vista RC1 at home now and its doing ok so far. But I havent put it on this, my work laptop, yet...Ill probably wait a while for that, lol.
  
  www.thatpoliticalblog.com
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
General Fault, 16 Nov 2006 @ 4:27pm

Overkill
Can someone tell me again why we are using a multi-threaded OS with multiple hardware abstraction layers, several layers of network protocol, and enough storage space per machine to hold the votes for the entire planet just to do a vote++ operation? Check out India's electronic voting system. It is a small simple hand held device that can handle multiple languages and a verifiable paper trail and is extremely secure. Why is it that the U.S. is so pathetically failing on this topic?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2006 @ 10:50am
  
  Re: Overkill
  Can someone tell me again why we are using a multi-threaded OS with multiple hardware abstraction layers, several layers of network protocol, and enough storage space per machine to hold the votes for the entire planet just to do a vote++ operation?
  Obfuscation?
  
  Why is it that the U.S. is so pathetically failing on this topic?
  How is the U.S. failing when the plan is working?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
dadshome, 16 Nov 2006 @ 4:41pm

Department of Redudancy Department
With all the people out of Jobs and the amount spent on Voting machines, why not ban the machines and do it the way it was done prior to the revolution (pick your revolution)
We could have real accountability and save money in the end. Watchers of the counters would be held accountable by serious fines that WOULD be upheld!
Standardize the ballots, recycle the ballots and after the required waiting time for any challenges... et al
Seeing as how our Social Security number has been trampled anyway, why not use that as part of the voter registration process? Naw that makes way to much sense...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2006 @ 10:52am
  
  Re: Department of Redudancy Department
  We could have real accountability and save money in the end.
  That's what we're trying to get rid of!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Debbi, 17 Nov 2006 @ 1:35am

Yin n' Yang
So what you're saying is that the votes I cast in FL 4 and 2 years ago didn't count at all (dangling chads) but the votes I cast in Lago Vista last week counted 3 times? I think I hear Roseann Rosanna Dana laughing somewhere.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tired, 17 Nov 2006 @ 2:29am

Simple solution…

That magnetic strip on the back of your drivers license that’s never used for anything, why don’t they just use that with the pin# being the last 4 of your SS# and install the voting menu software into Bank ATM machines, hell they could even charge you the $2.00 ATM fee when you voted Ha, ha The $2.00 fee could go to the candidate you vote for and they could use it in their campaign at next election to fund all the lies they throw around.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]