Friday, May 12, 2006
How real are the voting machine issues anyway?
Is all the talk just a bunch of what-ifs and sensationalism? Are the machines working OK in spite of what a few loud people are claiming?
No.
The worst problem in my opinion was in Fairfax County, Virginia. Under test, the machines turned out to be subtracting a vote for one of the candidates every hundred votes or so. It was a close race, too. That's the kind of problem that could go undetected and swing an election.
Worse, how is anyone who's not a specialist with too much free time going to be able to tell whether a voting machine failure is a bug or a deliberate attempt to steal an election? ("Remember, make it look like an accident"). Programmers have contests to see who can write the best program that looks OK but does something malicious. And the voting machine vendors aren't even letting people see the programming that counts those people's votes.
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No.
The worst problem in my opinion was in Fairfax County, Virginia. Under test, the machines turned out to be subtracting a vote for one of the candidates every hundred votes or so. It was a close race, too. That's the kind of problem that could go undetected and swing an election.
Worse, how is anyone who's not a specialist with too much free time going to be able to tell whether a voting machine failure is a bug or a deliberate attempt to steal an election? ("Remember, make it look like an accident"). Programmers have contests to see who can write the best program that looks OK but does something malicious. And the voting machine vendors aren't even letting people see the programming that counts those people's votes.
# posted by Frederick @ 9:01 PM Email to a friend:
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