Comments on: 144000 votes, 19000 registered voters

144000 votes, 19000 registered voters

elpapacito — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 04:19:11 -0800

In Lebanon, 144000 e-votes casted by 19000 registered voters. No need to blame Middle East crisis, try Lebanon , Boone County, Indiana. Diebold is no longer alone.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 04:21:27 -0800

And people who was seeking for more updates on e-voting problems and Diebold may like to give a look at this site which is the continuation of Why-War page on Diebold with updated news.

By: matteo

matteo — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 04:31:26 -0800

is it _really_ that hard to print old-skool paper ballots, giving people a big fat pencil and letting them vote like that?

By: alumshubby

alumshubby — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 04:32:45 -0800

Did all the dead people vote in alphabetical order as many times as necessary -- kinda like Bexar County, Texas?

By: jpburns

jpburns — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 05:12:34 -0800

Please, "cast," not "casted."

By: magullo

magullo — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 05:16:37 -0800

Here is an idea: "It OBVIOUSLY doesn't work; stop using it at least until it does". What is wrong with that approach again? / And please, mr. manufacturer, do not try to *fix* it.

By: shepd

shepd — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 05:27:08 -0800

Please — em-dash where appropriate! ;-) Grammarfilter.

By: cbrody

cbrody — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 05:28:46 -0800

A good article on the subject in Sunday's NYT: Machine Politics in the Digital Age [reg req], about Wally "committed to delivering votes to the president" O'Dell, Diebold's CEO.

By: rory

rory — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 05:45:37 -0800

I'll bet half of them read 'Nice site!' and linked to www.viagra-for-u.com.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 06:47:00 -0800

The important question here is whether County Clerk Lisa Garofolo is related to Janeane.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 07:01:46 -0800

shepd: the en-dash use (space en-dash space) is also considered appropriate for a break in thought, altho' this may be more common in the UK than the US. Believe me, I've had long conversations with my proofreader about this and what she says goes 'round here ;-)

By: skallas

skallas — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 07:11:23 -0800

The reckless implementation of these machines is just killing me. I mean, are they too lazy to bother with some basic crypologic keys? Instead of sending the voter a little card with their name, it can have their name and their key. After the election they can just put that key on a website and see if their vote registered. Or just attach these machines to printers to have a paper trail and consider it a UI upgrade. Its like they're doing everything to avoid accountability. No challenge/response, no third parties, no verification, etc. Just the machines calling some server someplace and a tech support number should something go wrong. That just ain't right.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 07:47:32 -0800

That just ain't right. Well, that depends on your point of view, doesn't it? You're thinking like a voter. Try thinking like a politician who wants to get elected without the bother and expense of actually convincing a majority of voters. See how the rightness quotient magically changes?

By: wendell

wendell — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 08:50:47 -0800

During a sleepless Sunday Night, I watched a rerun of a 4-year-old "Dilbert" cartoon on Comedy Central that went beyond the show's sometimes-on-target satire to being absolutely prescient on this very issue. Eerie. (Show title: "Ethics". It'll be aired again Thursday Night/Friday Morning at 2:30AM EST/PST on America's Comedy Central channel. Fire up your TiVos.)

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:34:34 -0800

My dns server won't seem to resolve the indystar domain (Or yahoo for some reason...), does anyone have a cache or text file of the article?

By: rory

rory — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:49:17 -0800

It was a pretty brief report, dejah420———here are the key paragraphs: Boone County officials are searching for an answer to the computer glitch that spewed out impossible numbers and interrupted an otherwise uneventful election process Tuesday.... A lengthy collaboration between the county's information technology director and advisers from the MicroVote software producer fixed the problem. But before that, computer readings of stored voting machine data showed far more votes than registered voters. "It was like 144,000 votes cast," said Garofolo, whose corrected accounting showed just 5,352 ballots from a pool of fewer than 19,000 registered voters.

By: AstroGuy

AstroGuy — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 10:30:48 -0800

Unlike the Diebold touch-screen systems, these machines do provide a printed audit trail so even though there was a glitch in the computer reporting, it was correctable. (I'm an Indiana resident and we use the same equipment in our county. I was also fairly involved with our municipal election a week ago.) Not exactly the same as Diebold's "we don't need no stinkin' printers" attitude.