It’s Election Day in America again today in a number of states. Therefore, electronic voting machines are once again failing and, even when they don’t, leaving voters guessing whether their votes were recorded accurately or even at all.
Here’s an early example this morning out of New Jersey, where pretty much the entire state votes on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems. The machine that failed, as detailed below, selected all of the candidates the voter didn’t wish to vote for when he attempted to vote a straight-ticket ballot. The machine is made by a private company named Avante International…
But as he was about to submit his choices, he realized an error with the machine. Rather than choosing the names he checked on his straight ticket, the machine had compiled the names listed below his preferred candidates.
Rumfield alerted a poll worker, who noted the error and said they’d report the malfunctioning machine. By going back through each question, and answering opposite of what he had the first time, Rumfield was able to manually choose the candidates for whom he actually wanted to vote, but he said he still left the polling place unsatisfied.
“Suppose there’s other machines in the town or Warren County that are rigged,” he said. “This machine should have been checked out before anyone was even voting on it.”
Bill Duffy, administrator and chief clerk for the Warren County Board of Elections, said the machines were calibrated in early October, but it’s not uncommon for them to have trouble on Election Day.
“There’s always one or two that just give us a problem,” he said.
He said the machine at the municipal building was the only reported problem he had received as of about 11:30 this morning.
Rumfield called Phillipsburg police and left a message at the mayor’s office to also alert them of the discrepancy. But he said he felt the situation was not being treated as seriously as it should, considering other people who weren’t paying close attention could have cast votes that were not as they intended.
“They tried to push it off like it was not big deal, but to me it is,” he said.
Dufffy said the machine was repaired this morning, but then started acting up again, so it was eventually replaced with an extra.
The article then ends with this reported note from chief of elections Duffy: “He said since voters also receive a printout of their votes, they can double check that the machine is working properly and change their choices if there’s a glitch.”
Of course, as Duffy knows, but apparently didn’t bother to mention to the news reporter, that “printout” is not actually counted by anybody. The election results will be based on whatever the machines happens to record internally, and that process is 100% invisible to everyone. Forever.
And, as we always must point out on Election Days, this is not a “glitch” or a “hiccup” or a “snag” or a “snafu” as these things will be downplayed in media reports throughout the day. They are failures. Period.
UPDATE 3:10pm PT: The Express-Times now reports that a second touch-screen system, at a different precinct in Phillipsburg, NJ has been taken off-line “after malfunctioning, according to Warren County Board of Elections officials.”:
They also report, in regard to the other machine which failed earlier, that the Phillipsburg Mayor Harry Wyant Jr., a Republican who is up for re-election today, is hopping mad that it was “repaired” and put back into service, instead of being removed immediately. The machine was eventually taken out entirely after it failed again later. Wyant is absolutely right to be angry. The notion that these systems should be “recalibrated” in the middle of an election is insane…as we have pointed out…to little avail…for many years now.
“Selection Chooses All The OTHER Candidates”
Ah, the simple if … then … statement reversed.
Brad, that proves something you and I know well:
(Old 8080 Chip). Sounds like some of these machines have their binary freak on.
all touchscreen voting machines are failures because they do not allow for everyday people to oversee their democracy
secret vote counting is simply unconstitutional
What if brad blog started a petition to ask the UN to oversee the 2012 elections?
These are simple devices running simple software. Any problem that caused such a dramatic error in the selection of candidates isn’t caused by the hardware of a single machine – it’s in the software. The hardware will either run the software or not – the only thing the hardware contributes to a possible inaccuracy is the alignment of the touchscreen. If a single machine is capable of flipping someones votes, then it is the software that is doing it, and therefore EVERY machine is capable or the same thing.
These machines are all capable of flipping votes – This discovery should have caused the elections officials to switch to verifiable, paper ballots.
Brad, you’ve probably seen this but I thought I’d post it to you anyway. 🙂 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ&feature=player_embedded
Oldie but goodie, 4Earth! Thanks for the reminder!!! Worth the click!
I would refer you, Paul B, to
HACKED: VIRUS IMPLANTED, SPREAD ON DIEBOLD TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING MACHINE!
Princeton Univ. Computer Science Prof. Ed Felton demonstrated that a single individual with just one to two minutes unsupervised access could implant a virus on a touch-screen DRE.
“We’ve demonstrated that malicious code can spread like a virus from one voting machine to another,” said Felten, “which means that a bad guy who can get access to a few machines — or only one — can infect one machine, which could infect another, stealing a few votes on each in order to steal an entire election.”
Duffy: “He said since voters also receive a printout of their votes, they can double check that the machine is working properly and change their choices if there’s a glitch.”
So I guess this is all “press and pray” voting! Yeah, but if you audit this election and the poll tapes, you might find separated summary reports like we did auditing the Pryce/Kilroy congressional race in Ohio in ’06. Fully a third of the precinct summary reports were run separately from the poll tapes and almost an entire month after the election. I was rudely ordered by an election official to stop counting results from the poll tapes as they rolled past. How can ANYONE ever really know what the real results were? There IS no way to know. And we were supposed to take the results seriously? Seriously? When malware goes viral or when third party software (malware) management companies come in a month before the election to “adjust the tabulators” or install new “software” how can we know they are honest? We can’t know and WE did NOT elect THEM.
When are these Neanderthals going to give up and finally move to the simple, fool-proof, easy…and CHEAPER…system used by Oregon? No polling places, no machines, no waiting in line…almost instant results, and time to consider your choices. Yeah…it’s so easy even New Jersey-ites could do it.
Craig @ 9:
Yeah, well, except for these probs with your Vote By Mail system in Oregon: https://bradblog.com/?p=6003
Refuse to vote on these rigged machines. Better to not vote at all than to participate in fraud.
J R – And how does that help exactly?
We MUST get rid of these machines as fast as possible. The dems and repubs have no class and no appreciation for honesty, talent, or integrity. Otherwise, they would adopt these virtues as HABITS. They mewl for dollars every day like baby rats and let the bad guys win with these voting machines from hell.