The Danger of Touch Screen Voting

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
If the mountain won't go to Mohammed...

Surely people called Mohammed aren't allowed to vote in the US anyway.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by mrmitchell

However, fortunately, most people who know what they're doing will spend their time changing Bush's middle name to 'Abigail' anyways.

Or "Olivia" Then he'd be all G.O.B.

[Japher]

Next thing ya know they are going to allow illiterates to vote and just put a picture of who they want to win up on the screen! Man, imagine the voter error there... Oh, I though Bush was the robot...

Why do we always have to make things easier for idiots?

[Shi Huangdi]

Suprise poltical victories to the Republicans were not a phenomon limited to Georgia in 2002, they were happening all over the country. It's certainly not an unheard phenonomon to see a poltician with a lead in the polls leading up the election lose in the election itself.

It's certainly disturbing that security is so lax for voting procedures, but so far their is no evidence of ill intent.

[Imran Siddiqui]

In a letter to fellow Republicans, O'Dell said that he was "COMMITTED TO HELPING OHIO DELIVER ITS ELECTORAL VOTES TO THE PRESIDENT NEXT YEAR."

And I bet in a letter to Democrats, he said the same thing . These are CEOs we are talking about here, they are very smart... with both parties.

[DRoseDARs]

I haven't really read anything on this matter besides the headlines, so maybe this is an already-answered question:
Do the voting machines in question print out receipts so the individual user has proof-in-hand of their vote?
If not...why...and would it be that difficult to do so?

[Tattila the Hun]

Why, oh why don't they use a simple piece of paper/cardboard, and put the NUMBER OF THE ELECTEE on that piece of paper?
Then count the numbers.

Works in Finland.

[DRoseDARs]

Damn Finns and your stupid logic!

Here in Nevada, ballots are old-fashioned #2 pencil (or pen) taken to a piece of paper and you fill in a little circle right next to the name of the candidate you wish to vote for. You take the completed ballot to the nice people operating that precinct's voting booths and place it (following the big arrow) into the machine that tallies the votes. The nice people then give you a stub verifying you've cast your vote(s) and also give you a "I Voted" sticker. Very clear paper-trail in the event of a recount.

God forbid it should be made that easy everywhere...

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
Fair enough. For my two cents:
I think that if votes are going to be tampered with, they will be tampered with. Technology is just a means to an end.

Might as well make it easy then?

Seriously this is the third or fourth time recently I've been stunned by "Oh well it'll happen anyway" reactions from American posters to things like this.

[Kropotkin]

It's quite disgusting that (parts of) the US cannot run a proper election. One would think that a country with more than one hundered years of experience should have it together by now. As Ming probably can tell us loads about, places like Chicago (Soon the be renamed as the Kingdom of Daleyland) has probably not ever had a decent election.

[Zulu Elephant]

The Danger of stupid people voting

[MikeH]

The US should ask for UN help to regulate it's elections and ensure they are fair.

[Zulu Elephant]

Didn't Mugabe ask America if he could offer them any help monitoring the Bush-Gore election fiasco?

He might be a murdering, mad son-of-a-***** but he's got a sense of humour

[Q Classic]

i honestly cannot believe that they were using access as the db...

access? jeebus, there are so many other more powerful db solutions--microsoft sql, mysql, postgresql...

access? capping out at 255 users, too. stupid.

[chequita guevara]

The national paper in Zimbabwe carried the most hilarious editorial in re: our election. This long run on paragraph went something like:

Imagine a country in which the decision of who was to be president came down to a few hundred votes. Now imagine that the decision was being made in a province run by one of the contestants's brothers. Now imagine that that contestants father had once been leader o that country. Now imagine that the father had also once been head of the nation's secret police. Anywhere else in the world, this would be a scandal and there would be international calls for monitoring, etc. Now imagine this country is the USA.