Florida Diebold machines help you pick the right candidate
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted October 30th 2006 7:41PM
posted October 30th 2006 7:41PM
Apparently Diebold's problems aren't limited to Maryland, Georgia or Alaska -- what a shocker. Down in the Sunshine State, during a week of early voting before next week's nationwide midterm election, certain Diebold machines have been registering some votes for Democrats as selections for the Republican candidate. For instance, Gary Rudolf, a voter at a polling site near Ft. Lauderdale, tried to vote for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis (D); however, when the Diebold machine gave him the final review screen, it showed his vote was about to be cast for Charlie Crist (R). The problem took three tries to get resolved with the help of a local poll worker. Mary Cooney, a Broward County Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman, informed The Miami Herald that it's "not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual." Huh? How exactly does a computer -- one that is being used heavily for one day a year, and not a $100 PDA -- "slip out of sync" ? Further, no one in Broward County is even sure how large of a problem this is "because there's no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues, and no central database of machine problems." Is it any wonder that major candidates are urging voters to vote the analog old-fashioned way?[Via digg]
Hmm ... I wonder if it would even be reported if it was a Democrat being switched in instead of a Republican, and if it were reported, the reaction from the crowd at large ...
Either way, yet another reason not to use these pieces of crap.
In Maryland, where I am a Poll Worker this election, there is no 15-step process for re-calibrating the screens, at least, not that they gave us. MAYBE they only gave that to the Chief Judges, but why?
Also, there are massive shortages in absentee ballots this year. Luckily for us, the only Republican that has a shot is the one already in the Governor's office, and he's only there because he ran on the FIRST BLACK LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR ticket last time.
Problems like this are why they have the review screen in the first place. Evidently the screen can become miscalibrated just like a palm device screen can.
The reason you are not hearing about this happening to republican voters is that if the democrat's name comes up in the final review, they don't assume that there is a conspiracy to disenfranchise them. They assume they made a mistake. If the machine consistently has the problem, then they are amused and either figure out how to get the thing to work, or call a worker to help them get it to work and roll their eyes as they leave the polling place. They don't immediately host a news conference, call the swat team, and post a bevy of outraged messages. Do you think with millions of people voting that there won't be an occasional error, whether human or machine based?
The only thing that bothers me about voting is that I don't have to show any ID. In fact, they won't let me show ID. When I walked in, they ask my name and then tell me my address and ask if that was right. I say yes and vote. If that is not a system ripe for abuse, I don't know what is. If votes are valuable, then please go to the trouble of confirming that I am who I say. It's a shame when the VIC card at the grocery provides more positive ID security than voting.
Wow that has to be the most obtuse and yet entirely characteristic neo-conservative Republican I've read on this discussion. The truth is that there is no larger or louder a whining crybaby than the modern Republican. Nobody knows how to cry conspiracy more whinily than a neo-conservative Republican. You need proof? Here's a list;
Bill O'Reilly - Any news story at all
Ann Coulter - Sept 11 widows
Rush Limbaugh - Michael J Fox
Bob Novak - Valerie Plame anyone?
And of course, let's not forget the class of 2000:
Matt Drudge
Kenneth Starr
Karl Rove
George W Bush
Of course, many modern Republican crybabies will complain and whine about how Clinton used his office to get BJs but at least he didn't send hundreds of thousands of American soldiers overseas to get shot at by a bunch of towelheaded savages. The only one to get shot in the face as a result of Clinton's actions was Monica Lewinsky, and I don't think she was complaining about it as loudly as Ken Starr and company were.
Thank God for that "Liberal" media cover-up!
Yeah those stupid republicans... they are either the dumbest people on the planet or the smartest to make everyone think they are dumb!
I guess all the dead democrats who are voting in NYC right now can meet up with the robots at Diebold... you know who is doing that... THOSE SNEAKY REPUBLICANS... they are casting votes for democratic officials with dead peoples information in order for it to look like the democrats are cheating! Those republicans are very sneaky indeed. In fact I bet if they do keep the house and the Senate its because the election was rigged! NO matter if the evidence points to contrary beliefs. The democrats can point fingers and not have any plans... the Republicans can have a plan and not do it well and everyone will be back to basics!
And in case you didnt get the sarcasm in the last few sentences. Both parties suck... if you do not like the voting machines use an absentee ballot.
Early voting is for those who can't make it on the 7th, and in some cases allows you to vote on paper rather than the machines.
Funny, how it errs in favor of Republicans, here we go again. They are trying tos teal another election. And before your right-wingers say anything, Katherine Harris disallowed the recount in Florida which gave the election to Gore to further her political republican career. It's fact. Gore won. Let's not also neglect exiting polls in NY last election, suspicious police activity in heavy black areas of Ohio and 14,000 missing ballots found in a trash can behind a voter location in Volusia County, Florida costing Kerry the state. They stole two elections and are trying to do it a third time.
The "slip out of sync" explanation actually does make some sense. The most common touchscreen technology is 5-wire (as sold by Elo). Lot's of things can affect 5-wire calibration, especially contact resistance changes and power supply drift, exactly the things that could act up if these sat in a warehouse for 6 months and went through a lot of temperature cycles. In contrast, 8-wire resistive technology, in conjunction with ratiometric A-D converters, auto-compensates for all of these problems. My company, FastPoint Technologies, makes touchscreens, and we use 8-wire technology exclusively for resistive applications because we wanted to eliminate calibration drift. Elo almost certainly went with 5-wire. 8-wire is also inherently more linear..
Why does everyone think this year will be different? They already stole 2 presidential elections (wide scale fraud). You really think they cannot steal House elections (small scale fraud). This is the same group that managed to legalize warrantless wiretaps, suspend habeas corpus, ban books like "America Deceived" from Amazon, detain demonstrators and start 2 illegal wars based on lies. The Republicans will probably lose a few seats to make it look good but maintain a majority. Then they'll declare martial law inside the US.
Support indy media.
Final link (before Google Books bends to gov't will and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3074338748583195498&hl=en
See the documentary "Hacking Democracy". Part of the right wing conspiracy is to castigate anyone who uses the word conspiracy.
Fact is, the Republican Party (and the Heritage Foundation, the Carlyle Group, Rupert Murdoch, & other right-wing elites) have close, close ties to Diebold --- and vice versa. As the documentary shows, it only takes a small handful of people to successfully tamper with the memory cards in any Diebold machines.
Also, the problem is *not* the touch screen machines - that's another Republican trick. The problem is ALL of the machines that run secret software. Even the paper scanning machines. This is a simple f**king counting machine - why does the counting software need to be a state secret?
2/3 of all voting machines in the country are Diebold. My suggestion is go back to the old, old Scantron machines - the ones that do not have external interface, that are dirt cheap, & can be operated &/or tested by anyone with a high school education.