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.

[george wythe]

You raise a good point about the maintenance necessary to keep these touch-screen machines functioning properly.

At this time, it seems that the machines have been used very little; the touch-screen machines have been used for one or two other elections previously, IIRC.

[libstripper]

Pure stupidity can goof up any system, not matter how rational and simple.

[JayNorth]

Something like this could have happened with the voting machines

There are four kinds of touch screen in common use, Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW), Resistive, Capacitive, and Infrared. They all have their pluses and minuses, but in the early days of touch screens poor choices were made due to lack of understanding and budget constraints. For most major touch screen rollouts now they use technology that is pretty darn reliable.

[TYVets]

It has been rumored that Underwriters Labratories tests all new types of voting machines in Broward County.

Have you seen a UL label on a voting machine?

(scar\off)

[weegee]

When voters hit the ''send'' button after failing to select a candidate, the touch screen gives them a warning. But it doesn't prevent them from voting anyway or, in this case, nonvoting.

I guess just like the Rats think (as Bill Clinton himself said) we don't have the good sense how to spend our own money, we must not be able to have the sense to vote in elections "right" neither. Simple solution. Automatically have the ballot select the DNC's chosen candidates and let voters "opt out" of those choices for Republicans, third party, communist, socialist, etc... This way the Democrats can get the majority votes that they always feel entitled to.

[weegee]

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 this is going to be done then THAT piece of paper is what needs to be put in the ballot box and the electronic tally needs to be deleted. You cannot have a paper "receipt" that you take home with you and an electronic ballot you entered at the polls. All it would be is for several hundred people to produce fraudulant "receipts" and claim "I didn't vote like THAT!". Even if they place "a" receipt in the box, it is no guarantee of their vote if there is a separately totaled electronic count (again, put a fake receipt in the ballot box to throw the results into suspicion).

Houston has electronic balloting now and I didn't see the results coming in any quicker than before. The polls close and the results aren't "counted" until after midnight on some races. There aren't that many vietnamese paper ballots (the Houston system so far is only in Spanish and English).

Another thing that may be throwing voters is the talk of "touch screen" systems. Houston has a dial. You can touch the screen with your finger all you want but it will do nothing to mark a ballot entry. Do people touch the screen on all ATMs yet?

All this talk of vote fraud and yet no mention of why it is "wrong" to ask all voters to produce photo ID (the type that every adult must have legally have to drive a car, let alone buy alcohol or even step into a bar, or write a check).

[mupcat]

**The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits.**

I don't know, I may be wrong, but it seems to me that back in the 50's people took some sort of a literacy test, at least in Virginia, before they could register to vote. Does this seem to ring a bell with anyone..... maybe just wishful thinking on my part.

[weegee]

Perhaps a sign of what is coming!

What? More RINOs running in the Republican Primaries where it takes fewer voters to sway an election?

[weegee]

Brady, spokesman for Parker, the second-place finisher, doesn't buy that theory, since there's just one page on the ballot.

Houston's former Dummycrat Mayor, Leepy Brown, went to vote in the primary runoff one time and walked out of the poll without casting a vote because he didn't realize that there weren't Democrats in the runoff.

Now in his honor's case, he couldn't cross party lines for the runoff election but some people really could care less which "Republican" is running for an open seat in an election that anyone can vote for. Even if they go to the polls. Maybe some meant it as a sign to the Democrats to put more muscle behind some viable candidates.

[weegee]

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

Knock and Drag BUMP

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Unfortunately, those were designed to keep blacks from voting because of the poor education for blacks back then.

[mupcat]

Thanks will--that's probably what I'm remembering. I'm sorry, but I think it'd be a good idea to have some sort of a test to at the least find out if people can at read and follow directions. Must be a better way then what we're doing. Stupidity is color blind.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Of course, I do think that there should be a test before you can vote. The voter would have to answer basic questions, for example:

1)They absolutely must know the names of the presidential/ vice presidential candidate from both parties during a presidential year or just the names of the president/veep during a midterm.

2) They must know the names of both of their senators and their representative.

3) Once their ballot is in, their vote is final. No complaining that they were confused.

Failure to know ANY from number 1 or 2 would disqualify them from voting.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Addendum to number 1: They should also know who the pres./veep is at the time of the presidential elections, if different from either of the major party tickets.


IE, if Smith/Johnson is finishing their term, and Johnson is running with Jones, they must still kinow that Smith is still the pres.

[Argus]

''These were the new machines. This was not supposed to happen.''

Wasn't that a line of dialogue in the last TERMINATOR sequel?

[BabsC]

print a receipt showing how the voter voted. A receipt for them and a copy to be kept inside the machine.

Fleece the taxpayers and kill the trees at the same time.....Stupidity is expensive.

[mupcat]

How absolutely scary to think there are those who don't know all or even 1 of those questions. Reminds me of the Jay Leno show when he does the current event questions to the people on the street and the number of those who don't even know who the president is---and these people have the right to vote!!!! Sad really sad!

[TC Rider]

Another Theory:

Dems rounded up enough 'non-voters', 134 to be exact, to call the validity of the new system into question.

Then, when they lose again in '04, they will point to these problems.

(and of course, it's all Bush's fault.)

[george wythe]

Dems rounded up enough 'non-voters', 134 to be exact, to call the validity of the new system into question.

We need to get to the bottom of this, soon.

The 2004 presidential primaries are just a few weeks again here in Florida.

[Still Thinking]

I once designed and built a machine for which my company did not provide on site installation. The customer called me up after receiving the unit and having it connected up for power, water, exhaust, etc., and said he could not get it to turn on. After asking if he was sure electrical power had been run to the unit, was the breaker in his panelboard turned on, etc., and being assured that all was well, I was stumped. I finally gave up and explicitly asked him if he had tried pressing the large lighted green button labeled "START", to which he replied "What button?". ;-)