http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/26/nevada-voters-say-reids-checked-touch-screen-ballots/

Quote :

"Nevada Voters Say Reid's Name Checked for Them on Touch-Screen Ballots"

Quote :

"Voters in one Nevada city are complaining that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's name was already checked when they went to cast their ballots in early voting Monday, according to Fox5Vegas.com. Voters in Boulder City said they were trying to vote for Republican nominee Sharron Angle, but that Reid's name was checked when they got to the electronic voting machines. "Something's not right," voter Joyce Ferrara told the network, saying several people reported the same problem. "One person that's a fluke. Two, that's strange. But several within a five-minute period of time -- that's wrong." "

Quote :

"A Clark County voting official said highly sensitive touch-screens may be to blame and that fraud is not the issue."

These aren't the droids you're looking for...

10/26/2010 3:33:11 PM

Sounds like a clumsy way to rig an election.

10/26/2010 3:44:44 PM

awesome

10/26/2010 3:54:08 PM

Quote :

"A Craven County voter says he had a near miss at the polls on Thursday when an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended. Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern said he pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked. He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result, he said. Then he asked for and received help from election staff. “They pushed it twice and the same thing happened,” Laughinghouse said. “That was four times in a row. The fifth time they pushed it and the Republicans came up and I voted.” "

http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/machine-91656-screen-voter.html

10/26/2010 4:14:17 PM

This was identified as a bug in the programming design, where the touch press rather than the release was used to trigger a selection. The button for Reid happened to be in the same place as the English language selection button, so unless you lifted your finger before it displayed the candidates, it would register another button press/touch for whatever was in the same spot.

Piss poor GUI design, not a conspiracy. Interesting nonetheless.

10/26/2010 5:11:39 PM

Quote :

"identified as a bug"

Quote :

"Piss poor GUI design, not a conspiracy"

I'll withhold judgements on that until we find out the political leanings of the programmer.

Interesting that a "mistake" like that could be made even though programming of the touch screen interfaces has been around quite a while and one might think it would be common industry knowledge to program touch release.

Even more interesting that the 2 buttons lined up the way they did.

10/26/2010 5:45:26 PM

Quote :

"Interesting that a "mistake" like that could be made even though programming of the touch screen interfaces has been around quite a while and one might think it would be common industry knowledge to program touch release."

You know what else has been around quite a while? Punching holes in things.

Ton of people fucked that up a few years back.

10/26/2010 6:30:36 PM

I can't get over how we've had electronic voting machines, an in general computers and touch screen technology for over a decade now and the damn vendors still can't get it right. Is it about time the state and local governments just commission Apple to make their voting machines?

10/26/2010 7:04:27 PM

No matter how idiot proof you make something, there will always be a bigger idiot. Sometimes I almost think we should have nothing but write in voting, if you aren't aware enough of the candidates to know who's name to write in, that's your problem. Of course, someone would still fuck that up, and we'd have debates over whether someone wrote one name or another.

10/26/2010 8:28:32 PM

You only think you are free.

10/26/2010 9:34:16 PM

these are easily conspiracies of the left. if bush's/gore's/kerry's election issues were conspiracies, so are these.

10/26/2010 9:51:57 PM

If you are too stupid to deal with mechanical or programming glitches you shouldn't be voting. The machine doesn't do what you want it to you call for help. Fucking idiots.

10/27/2010 7:47:57 AM

you shouldn't have to call for help on account of the machine doing the exact opposite of what you told it to do. I'm just sayin...

10/27/2010 8:07:56 AM

Quote :

"No matter how idiot proof you make something, there will always be a bigger idiot. Sometimes I almost think we should have nothing but write in voting, if you aren't aware enough of the candidates to know who's name to write in, that's your problem. Of course, someone would still fuck that up, and we'd have debates over whether someone wrote one name or another."

Yeah, I'd like that. They tried removing party labels in Kinston. The Obama admin put a stop to that, since poor/black people wouldn't know who to vote for if there wasn't a D next to one of the names. I'm sure a "write -in only ballot" would have a similar fate.

10/27/2010 10:09:00 AM

Instead of less information on the ballot, they should put more. They're electronic, so they could have much more information on each candidate. Put generic policy questions and a 1 line statement from the candidate why they should be elected.

10/27/2010 10:16:04 AM

^ Well, we can't even get the candidates names right (Rich Whitney turned into "Rich Whitey"). Imagine trying to get entire sentences right.

10/27/2010 10:35:35 AM

Quote :

"Voters in Boulder City said they were trying to vote for Republican nominee Sharron Angle"

Wow.

Just wow.

10/27/2010 10:36:40 AM

^^hahahahahahahahahaha

[Edited on October 27, 2010 at 10:40 AM. Reason : ^^]

10/27/2010 10:38:15 AM

^^I'd vote for an idiot over Harry Reid too.

10/27/2010 12:50:43 PM

I worked as chief judge at several polling places in the past few years, lastly for the previous presidential election. I can tell you that there are some really dumb people that vote. Wake County has a touch screen voting machine that is supposed to assist disabled voters, but more often than not, I was having to tell them "You want to vote for Obama? Put your finger here, and push." Literally.

People dont get technology as a whole.

10/27/2010 1:06:13 PM