No easy touch for 134 voters in Broward [Florida voters can't find touch screen]

Miami Herald ^ | Jan 8, 2004

[george wythe]

Three years after helping render punch-card voting systems obsolete, Broward County voters have proven that no election system is foolproof.

In Tuesday's special election to fill state House seat 91, 134 Broward voters managed to use the 2-year-old touch-screen equipment without casting votes for any candidate.

How so many happened to cast nonvotes remains a riddle. Unlike with punch cards or paper ballots, there's no paper record with electronic voting that might offer a clue to the voter's intent.

[TYVets]

There has to be something in the Broward County water!

[GovernmentShrinker]

It is beyond me why these machines were not designed to print a receipt showing how the voter voted.

It's perfectly clear to me -- they were designed to the specifications of Florida election officials.

[Wissa]

Lieberman has advocated adding printers to the touch-screen machines to create a paper record of each vote cast. Voters would be able to see the printout to verify it before they leave the machine, a type of technology that many states are beginning to consider.

If you don't turn in the paper copy proving you voted for the democrat, you don't get paid your cigarettes.

[longtermmemmory]

Don't forget miami.

The poll workers have a problem.

1. Is a poll worker allow to press a flashing vote button?
2. Why didn't the poll worker advise the button was flashing to the present voters?
3. Were they allowed to say a red light was flashing?
4. Are they trained to erase any such incomplete votes?
5. Were these non votes in one precinct?
6. Was the bulb burnt out on these units? (1/3 of all of browards machines are broken per another FR thread.)
7. Did the trainers before you go to vote go through their litany and include the red button warning?



In other news: Oliphant, the fired supervisor of elections, wants he job back and will run again.

[longtermmemmory]

67 counties 67 election officials. No single registered voter database. Most of them are republicans.

[libstripper]

"Unlike with punch cards or paper ballots, there's no paper record with electronic voting that might offer a clue to the voter's intent."

Thank God. This means there are actually objective standards the vote counters and courts will have a very hard time circumventing, and they'll be less likely to engage in the witchcraft of gtrying to determine unidentified persons' "intent.".

For somebody to vote, he or she actually needs to complete the voting, just like punching the "enter" button on a computer.

If the DemonRats dont figure a way to rig the machines through bogus programming, this could cut out at least some of their fraudulent voting. John Lott studied the Florida hanging chad situation and concluded that many of them were probably caused by deliberate punching of stacks of ballots. As I remember, he reached this conclusion by starting with the extreme statistical disproportion in how the hanging chads favored Gore instead of Bush.

On the computer rigging issue, I live in east Tennessee, we have used the computerized system for the last several elections, and I do not remember any credible challenge to it.

[longtermmemmory]

This was supposed to be fool proof.

well a 134 fools have been able to goof it up.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Unlike with punch cards or paper ballots, there's no paper record with electronic voting that might offer a clue to the voter's intent.

Thank G-d. Hopefully, we've heard the last of that stupid phrase; "The intent of the voter."

The intent of the voter was to cast a ballot...and they failed.....NEXT!

[mwyounce]

After reading your post, I get the feeling that there's some button I'm supposed to press or something? Is it the green one???? :-)

[mwyounce]

Especially Elmo.... what is that????

[Xenalyte]

So apparently they DID round up some of the terminally stupid and intern 'em! (I didn't know it was in Florida, though.)

[RckyRaCoCo]

[SAJ]

More like lobotomized.

[george wythe]

Last year, during the California recall election, the Democrats asked the courts to delay the election because LA county did not have the touch-screen voting machines in place. They argued that "minority" voters were being disenfranchized by being forced to use the traditional punch-card system.

Eventually, the Democrats lost in court; nevertheless, the Florida mess in the 2000 election was revisited by the media. We were told about the "unfairness" of having some counties voting touch-screen and others voting punch-card.

Obviously, the Democratic voters can screw up with touch-screen machines as much as they can with punch-card machines.

Sometimes I wonder, why did we allow ourselves to be intimidated into spending billions of dollars to buy these new touch-screen machines? Was it worth it?

[mwyounce]

They argued that "minority" voters were being disenfranchized by being forced to use the traditional punch-card system.

Maybe it's just me, but I would be insulted if someone went to a courtroom and claimed that I was too stupid to operate a punch-card ballot.

[longtermmemmory]

You now have a sixteen (16) vote spread with 134 non-votes.

Of all ironies, you have Democrats scrutinizing the recount of a Republican only election.

[longtermmemmory]

This is the fun part:

Before you vote they explain how the machine works and they tell you press the red button at the end to vote.

There is ONE putton
The button is at the top
It lights up at the end when you complete the ballots
It flashes when lit


NOBODY NOTICED the flashing red light.

[george wythe]

Maybe it's just me, but I would be insulted if someone went to a courtroom and claimed that I was too stupid to operate a punch-card ballot.

Excellent point. It's patronizing, to say the least.

[DonQ]

These people weren't necessarily stupid, and they didn't necessarily fail to follow the instructions. The machines might simply have failed to record their votes.

About ten years ago the District of Columbia Public Library set up a computerized catalog in its main library to replace the old file card system, and set up touch screens everywhere to enable people to access the computerized catalog from anywhere in the building. Within a very few months the system started breaking down - first one then another terminal stopped functioning, and finally the whole system just ceased to be useful. One reason was that, although the screens were meant to be touched, evidently the equipment wasn't prepared for every type of touching that happened: The micro-thin sensors ceased to function when the oil and grime of a thousand unwashed fingers had been deposited on the screen, and the impact of some people who thought they were jabbing a doorbell didn't do the machinery any good either, and some people - it's hard to say - maybe their long nails or calluses or gloves or poor circulation or just coming in from the cold or something prevented their body heat from registering on the sensors.

Something like this could have happened with the voting machines.

[TYVets]

Yes, we let the all knowing, all wise elite media intimidate us!

This is the same elite media that "forgot" Florida is in two time zones, therefore has two different times the polls close.

Re: November 7, 2000 Election Day.