I know that this will remain at the bottom of this thread, because it doesn't have enough conspiracy theory in it, but does anyone really think that this is actual vote tampering?
I mean, why on earth would you tamper with a voting machine so that it stuffs the ballot, but have it update the UI so that the user can see and report the error? This should fall to the way side of failing basic logic, but it doesn't because people want a sensationalist article to argue over. Changing votes would be much easier to do on the back end, and would have the additional benefit of never being detected by the user
It may very well be that changing the UI map is the easiest way to accomplish this. Any particular person may not have access to the backend code, but may have access to the code that maps screen positions to selection.
Having no knowledge of this machine in particular, I can't say much more, but it's certainly feasible that this is the easiest or only method to modify the outcome of a vote.
Based on the description and assuming it's accurate, we could conclude that there is some sort of mapping of the display to vote selection that is configurable locally. This makes sense, as every locality has different ballots - school districts, etc.
We do know that these things tend to be pretty poorly written, so you also can't assume even reasonable or typical component design.
If I were tampering with voting, I would do it on the front end, not the back end. That's because if the code is ever discovered on the back end, it is damning. A misaligned or badly proportioned mapping from touch coordinates to ballot options is much easier to explain away as an error or incompetence.
Doing it at the front end won't flip as many votes because many people will see the incorrect registration and stab at the touch screen a few more times until they find the right spot. But some will not notice, and in a close race that could be good enough.
He doesn't have to be lying, just unaware of how touchscreen calibration works. With resistive and infrared touchscreens, some portion of the screen can be miscalibrated or faulty even if other portions of the screen work correctly.
His "calibration test" doesn't actually demonstrate anything. Having some portion of the screen work incorrectly, while other sections of the screen work correctly, is entirely consistent with a calibration error for these types of touchscreens.
The only way to eliminate calibration error as the cause here is to: 1) re-calibrate the screen and see if the touch mappings are still incorrect. 2) if they are, the touchscreen itself could be faulty, so the next step is to replace the touchscreen with a known working version, and see if the issue persists.
Obviously there's no way he could have performed either of those steps, so there's no way he could eliminate calibration error as the cause.
Source: I've developed touchscreen kiosks in restaurants for years, and this behavior is entirely consistent with the miscalibrated touchscreens I've seen in the past. Often (generally with crappy touchscreens), a screen will hold its calibration for some period of time, and then stop working correctly until it's recalibrated once again.
Now, whether it's a good idea to use these types of crappy touchscreens in electronic voting machines is an entirely different question...
For such a major accusation, one would think to video all other choices working as expected, and only Obama being an exception. The simplest explanation for what he showed is a calibration error, but the matter is dramatically сomplicated if you take what he has to say for granted.
There are people who are so out of touch with technology that they might not understand the (to us, incredibly obvious and clear) feedback the UI is providing, and might overlook it or be scared of pressing the screen again. Grandmothers and curmudgeons.
It seems ridiculous to be unable to comprehend something that would be as familiar as using a hand calculator to people like me and you, but there are people out there who are afraid to touch the power button on their computers because they think they'll burn their house down or get a virus or something.
Imagine people like that trying to learn a brand new user interface in the span of 5 minutes while people are waiting in line for them to finish. It's a small population of people but it could conceivably make a difference given the right conditions.
edit: I forgot to add that this would be a good way to commit voter fraud and still have plausible deniability. Also, it would probably be more cost efficient to bribe someone for this small bug that gives a 0.5% advantage than it would be to pay for the campaigning that makes a 0.5% difference.
That's not the point. Yes, there might be people who will ignore the UI feedback and cast the wrong vote. The point is that, if you're going to tamper it, you'd rather tamper the back end. As it is, if this is happening to a lot of people, many of them are bound to report it and that risk completely outweighs any gain from the "grandmother" group.
In any case, I'm skeptical of the tampering hypothesis because only one person reported and filmed it.
If you assume that the team developing the software consists of more than one person, and a hypothetical vote-stuffer wants to minimise the number of people who know about the vote-stuffing attempt, they might not have any choice about who on the team actually implements the stuffing. It might be that they only have influence over the guy doing the UI.
Or it could be an attempt at plausible deniability. If all the machines need calibrating, but an uncalibrated machine just so happens to mis-register votes in the direction you want, that would give you an edge because you can guarantee that some machines won't be deployed correctly.
These voting machines flaws were widely reported last election. They always favoured the Republican candidate. Here's court testimony of an developer who was asked to create one of these rigged systems:
They don't "always" favor the republican. That's just hyperbole. There have been widespread reports of Romney votes being altered -- days ago.
I think our biggest problem is voter registration flaws and the lack of being able to identify that the person listed on the form is the actual one voting. We should also be dipping people's thumbs in ink like they do in Africa and Mexico to ensure that people don't vote twice.
Voter fraud is far more common than alleged insidious voting machine malfunctions. Those machines are checked by reps of both parties and under heavy, continual scrutiny. Voter rolls, on the other hand, or absentee ballots are rife with fraud. For example, thousands of military members won't get to vote this election because the department of defense failed to mail the ballots on time.
In 2010, I lived in China and didn't get my absentee ballot until 1 month after the election, even though I requested it 6 months prior from the US Consulate in Shanghai. I was disenfranchised like millions of other legal voters, both civilian and military.
Some people are more concerned about some old minority lady allegedly with the inability to get a free photo id, yet ignore the military and overseas vote. Yet for the old minority lady, she need only go to the local courthouse to get things straightened out, while a solider in Kabul doesn't have that luxury.
If the KKK were to show up at a Philidelphia polling site, there'd be cries of outrage and National Guard deployments, but since it's the New Black Panthers, it's ignored.
>They don't "always" favor the republican. That's just hyperbole.
I've yet to see a credible instance of vote machine "malfunction" favoring Democrats covered by a reputable source, but if you have any links I'd be interested as it's certainly possible.
>Voter fraud is far more common than alleged insidious voting machine malfunctions.
Due to the nature of electric voting without a paper trail, there's no way to make this assertion as contemporary electronic voting can't be audited.
>Those machines are checked by reps of both parties and under heavy, continual scrutiny.
Electronic voting in its current form is a remarkably bad idea. It invites corruption as a scale that requires much more resources than traditional analog voting fraud.
http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/malfunctio... """touched the screen to vote for Mitt Romney but the machine lit up the name of Barack Obama. Stevens tried a second time and again the machine lit up Obama when she selected Romney. She tried a third time and finally Romney’s name lit up. Stevens reported the malfunction to board of elections personnel and was told the voting machine had been “acting up all day.”
"""
"""
Sher Coromalis ... says she cast her ballot for Governor Mitt Romney, but every time she entered her vote the machine defaulted to President Obama....
Marie Haydock, who also voted at the Bur-Mil Park polling location, had the same problem.
...
Is it just me, or is this problem that “arises every election” one where malfunctioning machines always seem to err in favor of Democrats?
"""
Established media sources (preferably with some statistical analysis showing pro-Democrat anomalies) rather than random blogs would be nice, but thanks.
A random person's video carries more weight than a random person's unsubstantiated claim because video is, to some degree, evidence (it would be possible to fake, but would at least require some work).
But there is no real evidence. He shows a video of a garden variety bug/error with resistive touch screens, then makes some sensationalist claims in his comments that are completely unsubstantiated.
Skip to the relevant part of the video [53 second], and the guy clearly touches the bottom of the McCain section with his finger, then rolls his finger down. My point still stands though: The user sees the wrong selection immediately, and can notify someone or try again. The only scandal here is that this is even a story
My guess is the people who fund both the Democrats and Republicans like the idea of being able to rig elections and therefore there's mainstream silence about it. Otherwise, I find it hard to explain.
touchscreen calibration errors or related software glitches. I've certainly seen my own phone get screwed up enough on occasion that a touch on point x registered at y.
From my phone experiences, it isn't always a matter of a touch being shifted up/down by X everyone. Sometimes individual areas are screwed up. (as a simple experiment, I can put some water droplets on my nexus S and things go haywire unpredictably).
I'm doubtful this is malicious not so much because I'm some idealist that believes voter fraud doesn't happen, but because of all ways to commit fraud, this is a but ridiculous - it's obvious to everyone the machine is recording wrong and it will be noticed.
normally i'd agree but i don't see it out of line at all. just take a look at all the Herculean efforts that Republicans have made in the past two years to reduce the ability for people to vote
>I know that this will remain at the bottom of this thread, because it doesn't have enough conspiracy theory in it, but does anyone really think that this is actual vote tampering?
This exact thing happened last election. Why does it only happen to the advantage of Republican candidates?
Posted above what I found w/ 30 seconds of googling: Same touch one candidate, other candidate gets the vote defect, same dismissive attitude from poll workers, only difference is it favored the opposite party.
I mean, why on earth would you tamper with a voting machine so that it stuffs the ballot, but have it update the UI so that the user can see and report the error? This should fall to the way side of failing basic logic, but it doesn't because people want a sensationalist article to argue over. Changing votes would be much easier to do on the back end, and would have the additional benefit of never being detected by the user