Posted on 11/07/2006 8:37:10 AM PST by Sub-Driver
"...Election judges and technical staff reported that many of these units froze when the voter pressed the Cast Ballot button. This leads to great confusion for judges and voters. The voter leaves the polling place with little or no confidence that their vote was counted. In many cases, the election judges are unable to provide substantial confirmation that the vote was, in fact, counted...
...You’d be hard pressed to pick a worse time for a voting machine to crash. The voter has made his selections, confirmed them on the ballot review screen, and now wants them to be recorded. When the Cast Vote button is pressed, the machine reads the intended votes out of its temporary RAM memory and copies them into the official ballot record file, which lives in the machine’s flash memory...
...The kind of design mistake Diebold made — timing errors in the use of RAM chips — crops up in other ... systems, so we know what kinds of problems it tends to cause. Sometimes it will cause system crashes, but sometimes it will cause data to be corrupted when it gets copied from one place to another. Which is particularly worrisome because the Diebold flaw tends to show up just at the time when the vote is copied into the official record..."
The guy who runs:
http://www.asiawind.com/forums/list.php?f=3
a Communist, treasonous, anti American web site, is an Election Judge in Columbus.
It didn't work in 2004, and it won't work now.
So, did you vote????
These things should have been put to the test before they were purchased.
[ Vote machines crash in Ohio ]<-.
Soo.... the stuffing begins..
And then you took it out and used it, like loosing a rank one in an elevator, with a poor, defenseless, unsuspecting public, trapped and screaming, clawing at the doors, desperately attempting to escape.
I tell you, I am just green with envy.
The voting process is simple, straightforward and clear. You are asked to present proper ID and fill out and sign a voter card with your address etc. The election officer hands you a smart card which you insert into the machine. It says "LOADING BALLOT". You touch your candidate for an office and a large red box with an X appears for that candidate. If you accidentally touch the wrong candidate, just touch the one you really wanted. That's it. Press "NEXT" to go to the next page.
At the end you are presented with a summary screen where you can review your choices. If anything is wrong, you can go back and fix it. When you are sure it is right, pressing "CAST BALLOT" records your choices and the confirmation screen says "YOUR VOTE HAS BEEN RECORDED".
Then the smart card ejects and you give that back to the election officers who are watching what you are doing. I would much prefer to have a paper trail, but at least they didn't crash. Before Diebold we had punch chads, and you know how perfect that system is.
IMHO, the touchscreen vote is presented as clearly and simply as possible. Anyone who screws this up should not be driving a car, let alone voting. Get us a proper paper trail and I will be satisfied. Georgia estimates that retrofitting all the Diebold machines with printers will cost $75 million. Money well-spent.
did they try a restart?
control + alt + delete = SUCCESS!!!!
LOL! I'm not sure which one of you is the funniest. Thanks to you both for the unexpected laugh.
LOL! I'm STILL laughing.
Thanks for describing how the Diebold paperless machines work for voting. Sounds about perfect. Much better than paper.
I had done a Google search for Diebold voting machines and got the info on the crashing problem. The point is, they apparently can crash or lock up, but I've got to believe there is a hardware (replace the circuit board) or firmware (reflash the program) fix for it...
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