Forgive me for being suspicious...
 

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...orida_voting_5

Ok, I'm a computer guy with experience in datacenters where vast amounts of information are stored on many computers. Things crash.. that's just the grim reality of computers. However, you've gotta be the most moronic speck of insipid festering stupidity to let information as important as VOTING RESULTS to slip through your fingers as a result of a crash. There are such things as back-ups and mirrors, and if you fail to use one of these, you have got to be the most despicable of anyone to ever get hired to take care of data.

With that said, I don't believe a word of this article. I think the information was aborted on purpose.

Florida is in danger of becoming the next Florida.
That state is supremely fucked up election wise.

I think it's really funny how the UN offered to come in to help oversee the recount efforts of the 2000 election.

Maybe they should preempively offer again so 9,000 black democrats in Miami-Dade aren't again "mistakenly" barred from voting.

Yeah, I do think current technology is way better than it's being reported to be in this particular implementation. Or else they got some extremely bad-news technologists setting this stuff up.

It feeds into the "don't trust computers" Luddite nonsense that's evidently still a very popular catch-all excuse for bad work. People seem very willing to accept reports like this as obviously true.

Why don't you guys just appoint Dubya (again) and be done done with it? :)

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Turns out, 2000 Florida election was broken in a couple places, so they fixed it... with more broken stuff. Demands for accountability and hard evidence in light of failure isn't about the technology, it's about the yahoos who produced bad technology that potentially disenfranchises voters.

Many voters.

With something as important as voting results, there needs to be a way to manually count votes. All they need is a simple printout of the voter's results. Give one to the voter and one to the polling place.

kutulu, I'm sure they had all of these logical developments in place. I'm sure they turned over every stone to make sure their methods were rock solid.

However, when they saw results that they didn't wanna see, they claimed system failure.

It's not Luddite to understand that that a preexisting technology is superior to what's newer. Accountability is a requirement of a voting system, like Halx said, there needs to be a backup. In the article accountablity was sought and there was no backup.

We're talking about counting things and keeping finite data over time and it turns out that the best technology humans have for this is physical representation on paper or stone. It's easy to reconstruct the life and career of any 17th century British naval swabbie if you have access to the paper hardcopy records. Try and investigate the U.S. military records of say even...The President of the United States...and you won't find anything due to a "microfilm flaw."

I think we do need U.N. election oversight. There are simply too few truly non-partisan people in the country right now.

Our municiple voting system uses a combination of ballot and computer.

We pencil in the circle (or square) beside the chosen candidate and the ballot. This ballot is then fed into a machine that scans it and records the vote.

If the machines fail, they can always count the physical cards.

voting ought to be anonymous. if the voters gets recepts of their votes, then this makes pressuring voters easier by corrupt officials. they could just demand to see your receipt to make sure you voted 'properly'.

a high-tech solution is not always preferable if it opens up a bigger can of worms than sticking to what works. that isn't a luddite attitude, it's just common sense. if a new system is implemented though, then at least leave a backup paper system that can be counted manually.

Yes, agreed. The tech should fit the task.

My use of the term "Luddite" referred specifically to how a story about computer failure activates the nascent Luddite in many people who read reports of it and simply believe it because they are predisposed to that belief.

While I do not buy into the "right wing election conspiracy" thing, it does not help that Diebold, who makes and services these machines is run by a man who said he would do anything he can to make sure George Bush is reelected. This is certainly a time when new technology doesn't improve the situation. It will be fascinating to see how this year's election turns out.

The county I vote in (PG County, Maryland) uses an electronic system that works rather well. At least I haven't heard of any problems with it, and they used it for a few years now.

A physical copy is not hard to do, and should be done for the sake of permanency. The voter should not get a copy of the results (for the reasons stated previously), but printing out a tag that lists the results is neither hard nor a bad idea.

The problem with technology is that the people who know how to use it aren't in the position of power needed to ensure it's proper use.

I will be sending in my absentee ballot to good ol (not!) Charlotte County, FL. Hopefully Kerry will have enough of a lead that my vote won't even have to be counted.

I'm one of the adminstrators of the back-up system (TSM) of a major southern university and the idea that votes could just be lost points to incompetence, negligence or both. I don't think that the government of Florida is intentionally rigging the system but they are demonstrating the level of concern that they have for the accidental disenfranchisement that occured in 2000.

Were those voting machines running Windows??? But seriously though...

It breaks my heart to see the media blaming technology for whatever happened. If it was fraud, it was fraud. If there was a computer malfunction, then a paper trail isn't going to solve it (especially if it's fraud and a computer 'malfunction'). Somebody should write a better program if the existing one doesn't back up the data where it's safe from crashes. There are probably 50 people just at TFP that could do it.

Actually, they do run windows.
They use Microsoft Access for the database.
The fuckin' database for these voting machines is good old glitchy, unsecure Access.
God forbid they use a stable and secure one.

Brother Jeb has one job - deliver Florida. These clowns will do anything to retain power. They are morally bankrupt.

This just in. They "found" the data.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/...0730_1204.html

Superbelt, really? MSAccess?
sheesh!

Boggles the mind, huh? This almost makes me want to become a volunteer consultant to help tech-illiterate politicians steer clear of the worst POS systems out there.

I worked a year in tech support. I was basically 3rd teir support. Wasnt cheap to talk to me, I was helping programmers and administrators for companies with large datacenters. It was appalling how incompetent many of these people were. They were in charge of millions of dollars worth of data, and yes, quite a few didnt know how or even realize they should back their important stuff up. It really shocked me how these people actually managed to get jobs. From that point on I lost all fear of ever being unemployed in the tech industry again.

That being said, it wouldnt suprise me if the story were true.

It still kind fo bothers me that they're keeping it on a (presumably burned) CD. In my experience, if you don't keep them in an air-conditioned room with controlled humidity, they lose bits of data when you look at them funny. For an election, there should be redundant and offsite backups

It would be funny if the destiny of the United States depended on a 20 cent Taiwanese CD-R from a $10 50-pack cakebox.

Hm.. I was neutral for the voting machines until now... MS Ass, I mean MS Access isnt the way to go for something as important for this.

Ok...now I'm scared. Hold me.

Who's to say that this so called "malfunction" isn't a way to plant the seed of doubt, about any result ???????????????

There are dishonest people in both political parties.

Why won't anyone even entertain the possibility that this is a story created (or problem created intentionally) just to look like Gov Bush will do anything to help Pres Bush.

Search for diebold on google. These voting machines can be hacked and all traces of someone tampering with the vote can be erased. There was a bit about it on the daily show. Also, the cfo of Diebold is a top fund raiser for Bush. The source code of the system has been ruled by a court to be a trade secret, barring anyone from analyzing the code for backdoors etc. As a computer science major, this basically boils down to diebold patenting, "vote_count++;" I guess this makes a majority of my programs in violation of copyright infringement. And all this in the state where your brother is Governor. It is sickening. They are probably laughing their asses off at the ignorance of the majority of Americans. It looks Bush will outdue his unprecedented placement into the presidency by using technology to steal the election. Hail to the theif.