Errors plague voting process in Ohio, Pa.

[eablair3]

Errors plague voting process in Ohio, Pa.

Published: Wed, Nov 3, 2004

Mercer County used paper ballots in some precincts.

VINDICATOR STAFF REPORT

So much for advanced computer voting technology.

Mahoning and Mercer — the only counties in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys to use electronic voting machines and among only a handful in Ohio and Pennsylvania with the technology — encountered a series of problems that delayed results for hours Tuesday.

The Mahoning County Board of Elections will begin an investigation immediately to find out the sources of the problems, said Mark Munroe, the agency's chairman.

Problems in 16 of the county's 312 precincts caused the results in Mahoning to be held up for about three hours as election employees checked the machines' tallies at the election board. The results are supposed to be tabulated at the precinct locations. The results were finalized about 1:30 a.m. today. The county has 1,162 electronic voting machines.

...

The human error specifically was precinct officials getting nervous or overwhelmed by the number of people voting, and then failing to properly follow protocol to count the ballots in the machine, he said.

That led to some races showing votes of negative 25 million, Munroe said.

"The numbers were nonsensical so we knew there were problems," he said.

...

here were other problems with Mahoning machines. One in Boardman Precinct 44 had to be removed because the glass on top of the electronic screen was too far from the screen, making it difficult for people to use their fingers to cast ballots, Munroe said. A screen went blank on a Youngstown voter while he cast his ballot, he said.

Also, there were 20 to 30 machines that needed to be recalibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate's opponent, Munroe said.




... (MUCH MORE)

http://www.vindy.com/basic/news/281829446390855.php

__________________

good thing John Kerry provided a chance for stuff like this and more that is sure to follow to come out. Quitter. Loser.

[Born Free]

1. Kerry betrayed his supporters by giving up too soon

I hope they enjoy the Holy War the bush team is planning to have

[Dancing_Dave]

2. A COUP D'ETAT IS NO ERROR!!!!

The 9/11 propaganda coup was no negligent mistake and the planned and systematic disenfrachizement of untold hundreds of thousands or millions of people is no technical glitch!!!

Those who are unable to face an obvious fasicst coup underway in their country, are complicit in making it succeed!

FIGHT THE BASTARDS TO THE BITTER END, THEN JUST LEAVE WRECKAGE OF THIS COUNTRY IF WE CANNOT SUCCEED!!!

NO HEALING! NO LIES! NO SURRENDER!

It's clearly now or never to expose and fight this.

[Rjnerd]

3. The first woodpecker to come along...

I am sure that everyone knows the old saw about programmer construction standards.

Here is a very simple one: Machine giving negative 25 million results.

Certainly humans can notice this as well, but this is a tally guys, they are NEVER negative. If a negative number is showing in a result, its a big error. The big red "DOES NOT COMPUTE" light should come on.

Fine, one machine emits a bogus number (it should routinely check before printing/sending and stop), but the central tally machine should do a simple thing called a bounds check. Basic engineering bozos...

I have made my living as a programmer until the outsource economy stepped in. Things like this show that we are neither proffessionals, nor craftsmen.


Oh yea, two people should get canned because this happened in the field -- the programmer that ommitied the obvious bounds check, and the employee's of the certification agency who missed one of the most basic test cases that they should have tried. You _always_ try out-of-range "nonsense" inputs.

-dp-
Card carrying nerd, who is ashamed of some of the people that claim to practice my craft.

http://www.the-nerds.org

(I wasn't kidding about the card carrying part, I have the logo on my biz cards)

[tsuki]

4. Overwhelmed by the number of people voting?

According to the networks, there weren't that many people. Next excuse? Maybe they were tired like the pore folks down in Miami Dade.

Can we outsource our election process to possibly, Sweden? Denmark? Canada? Or may China?

[LisaL]

5. I wonder who did they subtract 25 millions votes from?

:eyes: