DescentBB

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645, ... _tophead_2

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

See, this is why I dont think we can trust eVoting. There are going to be errors, some possibly intentionally if the machine is hacked or rigged, and if there is no paper trail there will be no way to do a meaningful recount. I'm fine with Electronic Voting Machines if and only if they allow for a meaningful recount or a recount by hand.

Oh, I dont want to be thought of as a conspiricy theorist, but did anyone notice that exit polls matched almost perfectly in states where eVoting is not used, and did not match at all in places where eVoting is? CNN has retroactivly changed their exit polls now to match the supposed "actual" results so things dont look fishy.

In a number of countries, exit voting is used to determine wether or not the election was ran honestly. If the vote recorded is within +/- so many points of the exit polls, the results stand. If its not, the election is tossed out and ran again. Exit polling is a proven method that can be used to track elections.

*waits for the "stupid whining liberal" pseudo-flames to start rolling in*

From the quick math, Bush still won Ohio.

thats not the point, dcrazy

Yeah, it bothers me that the exit polls were so off.

I just wnat to know if I should be bothered politically or mathematically.

I know it's not, I just wanted to cut off the complaining before it had a chance to start.

The real problem is that we're fricken overcomplicating the election. Is it that hard to fill in a bubble and drop a sheet of paper into a box?

Im with DC on this one.

Oh, I dont want to be thought of as a conspiricy theorist, but did anyone notice that exit polls matched almost perfectly in states where eVoting is not used

Grasping at straws?

"Yeah, it bothers me that the exit polls were so off."

Exit polls were actually fairly close when all was said and done.

At the amount of samples they had, a standard deviation becomes quite small at a 95% confidence level.

Grasping at straws? Hardly, Sirian.

And yes, by the quick math it still looks like Bush won by about 130k or so, but thats not the damned point. The damned point is how many machines had similar errors and werent discovered so easily or at all? And why did the exit polls only fail in states where eVoting took place? Youd think the exit polls woulda been off in at least one paper ballot state, or woulda been on in one eVoting state, but that wasnt the case here.

The point is, rigged polls or not, mistakes like this shows exactly why we can not and should not trust our elections to electronic voting with no paper trail. Like I said, how many more erros are there out there that are currently undetected? How many undetectable errors are there? Who knows, thats why I dont think we can know whats going on. Its all hidden in private source code. Yeah, the source code for those machines is supposedly posted ina collection at the federal level, but how do we know that the source code thats in the machine matches it? What if its a less reliable version? Or worse?

We need to campaign against these damned paperless machines so we can all have some real confidence in our election system.

Seriously, wtf is wrong with a fill-in-the-bubble scantron ballot?

This matters about as much as a drop of water in a bucket.


Avder: Last I checked, nothing really. that's how we do it up here. fill in the circle and drop the paper in the ballot box. done.

I cant believe this. Any veteran of any Windows OS knows how much crap can go wrong with mis-written software. How can anyone not be concerned about paperless eVoting?

Lets not forget Pa had a couple thousand votes on their machines even before the polls opend. 'Course they were all for Kerry and perhaps these were what the exit pollers started using.

Avder wrote:I cant believe this. Any veteran of any Windows OS knows how much crap can go wrong with mis-written software. How can anyone not be concerned about paperless eVoting?

The only problem with that theory is that if there were such a problem why would it be biased toward the repoblical voite? Note that Bill M$ is a democrat.

Of course, all this assumes that exit polls are accurate.

COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

in all the years ive lived in ohio and have talked to people who have been alive longer than me in ohio, ohio has always been a republican state. its more credible to blame electronic voting on the closeness of the ohio votes than it is to the fact that bush won the state. i couldnt beleive it was that close myself. all the local polls they've been running here in the past 2 years have shown bush with at least 60% of the vote. its how it is here. republicans lower our taxes and make sure we dont get planes run into our buildings, and thats all ohioans really care about. in return, we vote republican. to say ohio actually should have been in favor of kerry, or most any democratic candidate really, but had its electronic voting machines hacked is just funny. not haha funny, sad because you're grasping at straws funny.

Clinton took Ohio. Ohio like a lot of the nation, is different where you go within the state. I have conservative relatives in ohio who are bush voters in suburbs of cleveland and in toledo. I also have a sister in columbus who is very anti bush.

kurupt, its not ohioians, its buckeyes, fyi

Terrorists aren't interested in running planes into buildings in Ohio. Maybe that's why the Republicans have so much success in preventing attacks on Ohio.

On that note, it is interesting to note that the juiciest terrorist targets aren't in the "red" areas of the states, but in the "blue" areas. WTF were all those Kerry supporters thinking, knowing that they and not Middle America are in the terrorists' sights?

Madness, I tell you!

DCrazy hit the nail on the head. We're overcomplicating the election process. Voting machines are a solution in search of a problem, technology merely for the sake of wasteful technology.

The machines leave no paper trail. Moreover, the software in most cases is closed-source, so it's really anyone's guess as to what those clowns at Diebold are actually programming.

The irony is that as states using the electronic voting machines now claim they'll implement paper trails. But isn't that the very thing these machines were supposed to replace?

The volunteer method of vote counting has worked for centuries and it will continue to be the best. It's the least susceptible to corruption. Even if a rogue volunteer started counting for Bush, he could well be evened out by the rogue volunteer counting for Kerry. In other words, there are multiple points of minor failures, rather than a centralized singular point of massive failure. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer common citizens to count the votes rather than some shadowy corporation anyday.

solution in search of a problem

Yep, sounds that way.

Avder wrote:We need to campaign against these damned paperless machines so we can all have some real confidence in our election system.

I agree.

In my precinct, we have paper ballots with the number 2 pencils and little radio buttons to color in. This seems to work well enough. Sure beats the punch cards!

I would not trust a fully electronic mechanism. I know the paper reading machines make some errors, but I agree with the wisdom of leaning toward "multiple points of minor failures, rather than a centralized singular point of massive failure."


- Sirian

A good solution:

don't have the vote for federal,state,county, and/or local ballots on the same day.

Like how many questions did the average punch card in florida have?