TEXANS, DOUBLECHECK YOUR BALLOTS! Texas voting machines are switching votes

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Texas voting machines are switching votes — but it’s bad design, not hacking

By Adi Robertson@thedextriarchy Oct 30, 2018, 9:54am EDT

When Texas’ early voting process started last week, some people finished filling out their ballot only to see that their choices had been changed — either switched from one party to another, or erased completely. This seemed like a bug at best, or deliberate election tampering at worst. But state officials have declared that the machines are functioning correctly; people are just using them wrong. And they’ve decried a “disturbing trend” of misinformation and exaggeration, which they worry might dampen enthusiasm during an unusually competitive election year. At a time when election boards are facing very real threats of foreign interference, though, a voting machine that doesn’t accurately record votes has also raised major, understandable concerns — even if it’s just the result of a bad interface.

This seeming “vote-flipping” occurs with the Hart InterCivic eSlate, an electronic voting machine that’s been in use for nearly two decades. The device shows its age: it looks like an outsized PalmPilot, and voters make their selections with a clickwheel and button at the bottom. Around one-third of Texas counties — 82 of 254 — rely on eSlate machines, and in the vast majority of cases, they accurately record voting results. But if voters touch the interface while the page is still loading, or use the clickwheel and button at the same time, it can change their ballots without the user realizing it — especially if they’ve picked a one-button straight Democratic or Republican ticket, since it takes several seconds for the machine to check the boxes for each race.

James Slattery, senior staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, tells The Verge that around two dozen straight-ticket voters from 10 counties have called to complain about “flipped” ballots. The voters generally noticed before they’d cast their final ballot, so they could go back and correct the errors. And the number of complaints was minuscule compared to the 55,000 ballots collected on the first day of voting alone. But Slattery emphasizes that even a small number of miscast votes can undermine faith in the whole process. “The fact is, it’s deeply unnerving to voters when they intend to select one thing, and then they get to the end and see that the machine appears to have done the exact opposite,” he says. "It’s ‘deeply unnerving’ to vote for one candidate and see the machine record something else"

The Secretary of State’s office has admonished voters to fill out their ballots slowly, emphasizing that “the voting machines are not malfunctioning” and that the issue was purely “user error.” As writers and security experts like Matt Blaze have pointed out, however, users shouldn’t be expected to adapt to a bad interface — especially since the Secretary of State’s office also noticed the issue during the 2016 election. One county election administrator told ABC News Houston that he’d seen the problem cropping up for at least six years, prompting the Texas Democratic Party to criticize the Republican-led state government for “doing nothing” about the problem.

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https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/30/18037872/texas-voting-machine-hart-eslate-voting-ballot-switch-problems

[MagickMuffin]

1. HAVA, has NOT worked for a long long time.

It was a ploy to begin with to get everyone to vote without knowing who you are voting for and no paper trail.

They really really didn't want voters to have access to who they voted for.

[exboyfil]

2. Why don't we all use optical scan ballots

Proven technology with a paper trail.

[efhmc]

3. So happy to see this being reported here. Lots of reports of this happening on Twitter.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. From the State Party

Link to tweet