Voters in Texas are having their selection flipped to an entirely different party by the state's 20-year-old-ballot machines, officials have admitted.
Dozens of people attempting a straight-ticket choice - where they vote for the same party in all posts being contested - have reported their commands being disobeyed by the devices.
Republican voters say they have found themselves staring at screens telling them they have selected democrat Beto O'Rourke for the US Senate. Democrats say the same machines have told them they have favoured the Republican Ted Cruz for the same position.
It is unclear if anyone has actually voted for the wrong party as a result of the flipping as the machines give users the chance to correct any errors before confirming.
But the issue has added one more controversy to one of the most acrimonious midterm elections in America history.
Concerns with the devices were first raised on social media but state officials confirmed on Friday they were aware of the problem - which they then blamed on voter misuse.
The Hart eSlate machines are not malfunctioning," said Sam Taylor, spokesman for the office of Secretary of State, according to the Press Association news agency. "The problems being reported are a result of user error - usually voters hitting a button or using the selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering."
The Hart eSlate machines in question are used in 30 per cent of Texas counties, including the state's largest, Harris, which includes the city of Houston.
[In a statement on Friday, Ted Cruz said he had heard of "multiple reports" of race selections changing and told supporters: "Once you select the Republican Party ticket, please be patient and do not select 'next' until the ballot has populated all of the selections."
Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas Democrat party chairman, demanded a public service announcement to warn voters, training for poll workers on the issue and the removal of "malfunctioning machines".
But Zenen Perez, of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the problem would keep happening until the state increased investment in its election infrastructure.
"Texas just hasn't spent the resources necessary to modernize," he told GQ magazine. "Until they do, we're going to continue to see this kind of thing on a regular basis."
I'm surprised but relieved that it appears to be hitting both parties, which suggests mere incompetence rather than fraud. Although it did cross my mind that someone who wanted to undermine faith in the democratic process and pit both sides against each other might do this deliberately (cough-Russia-cough).
Edit: Also, fuck voting machines. Hand-counted paper ballots for the win.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.
I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
Every election we get stories like this. Though at least this time looks more incompetent than fraudulent.
"The problems being reported are a result of user error - usually voters hitting a button or using the selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering."
Sounds like a crap voting machine to me:
- The machine takes long enough to load that this is a possible issue. On modern hardware.
- They don't have the machine ignoring inputs until the rendering is finished.
- They had insufficient testing and/or decided to release machines with this problem. What other problems did they miss/ignore ?
We've had reports of issues with same in Georgia. Although here, it may well be deliberate.
But frankly, I feel like it's time for some kind of federal election standards. Let the states and local governments do things the way they want to, but when elections on a Federal level happen (Congress, President, etc) then they should all be administered the same way for efficiency. If a state can't afford to do it, then allocate some money for the purpose. So an Abrams or two doesn't get built, I don't think the Army will cry too much about it considering they've literally mothballed new tanks for a while now because they don't need them!
And part of this would be having certain specifications mandated for voting machines. 20 years old, jesus...
Elheru Aran wrote: ↑2018-10-27 07:12pm
We've had reports of issues with same in Georgia. Although here, it may well be deliberate.
But frankly, I feel like it's time for some kind of federal election standards. Let the states and local governments do things the way they want to, but when elections on a Federal level happen (Congress, President, etc) then they should all be administered the same way for efficiency. If a state can't afford to do it, then allocate some money for the purpose. So an Abrams or two doesn't get built, I don't think the Army will cry too much about it considering they've literally mothballed new tanks for a while now because they don't need them!
And part of this would be having certain specifications mandated for voting machines. 20 years old, jesus...
In theory I agree, but...
Counterpoint: do you really want the current administration and Congress setting nation-wide election standards? Because that's basically a sure path to "elections" where basically no minorities vote, it's increasingly difficult for Democrats to even run, and Dear Leader wins 80 or 90% of the vote.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.
I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
Elheru Aran wrote: ↑2018-10-27 07:12pm
We've had reports of issues with same in Georgia. Although here, it may well be deliberate.
But frankly, I feel like it's time for some kind of federal election standards. Let the states and local governments do things the way they want to, but when elections on a Federal level happen (Congress, President, etc) then they should all be administered the same way for efficiency. If a state can't afford to do it, then allocate some money for the purpose. So an Abrams or two doesn't get built, I don't think the Army will cry too much about it considering they've literally mothballed new tanks for a while now because they don't need them!
And part of this would be having certain specifications mandated for voting machines. 20 years old, jesus...
In theory I agree, but...
Counterpoint: do you really want the current administration and Congress setting nation-wide election standards? Because that's basically a sure path to "elections" where basically no minorities vote, it's increasingly difficult for Democrats to even run, and Dear Leader wins 80 or 90% of the vote.
That is an issue with the concept, yes. The fix, I suppose, would be to (to prevent obvious conflicts of interest) for example have a bipartisan board in charge-- if a Democrat retires, he must be replaced with another Democrat, for example. And there would need to be some representation from political independents as well such as the Green Party and the Libertarians. Something proportional, perhaps, but proportional representation would get somewhat ludicrous given that it'd be something like one Green and one Libertarian to like twenty on either side...
Anyway, I still think having certain federal standards for elections is a good thing. At the very least, I think it would simplify Federal elections and to a degree help in preventing election fraud. For example, if elections are getting hinky in Arizona, you could bring in people from say New Hampshire, who would have pretty near zero conflict of interest as far as local affairs went, to fix it. Political affiliation would be another thing, of course, but perhaps there could be a rule about cross checking each other's work. The state party offices could send a tech geek from their own office to look at it themselves, or whatever. *shrugs* I don't realistically see anything like this happening anytime soon though, so it's all napkinwaffen at the moment.
Counterpoint: do you really want the current administration and Congress setting nation-wide election standards? Because that's basically a sure path to "elections" where basically no minorities vote, it's increasingly difficult for Democrats to even run, and Dear Leader wins 80 or 90% of the vote.
That's what a professional civil service is for... which probably explains all the bitching about a "deep state": Can't stack the deck on polling day if the people in charge of administering the electoral process aren't headed by a political appointee, right?
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
The problem is not the lack of state funding but the lack of consistent technical standard. By its nature, a computer is a device of layered abstractions upon abstractions and that each layer hides what the one below it does. That is why we have graphical interfaces rather than manually configuring logic gates by hand. Thus a computer in operation is a black box. You know how it works, you can open it and you can freeze a moment of operation but you can't look into it without potentially also altering it.
And having a black box for your voting is practically begging invitation for someone to tamper with it, ie, cause large-scale voter fraud by hacking.
A detailed explanation of the problem:
Credo!
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