The AP is Already Spinning the November Vote in Florida

According to this story

Fla. Voting Machines Have Recount Flaw

First of all, I have to say... Duh!!! Computer Security people have been talking about this sort of thing for YEARS people! (not to mention this is only 1 problem out of many with electronic voting machines)

They are characterizing this particular problem as follows:

The machines, made by Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb., fail to provide a consistent electronic "event log" of voting activity when asked to reproduce what happened during the election, state officials said.

Oops - can you say - no recount possible??? But state officials have the answer to this little dilemma

State officials say there is no need for recounts, or an audit trail, with the touchscreen system because it was designed to prevent people from voting in the same race more than once — an overvote — and provide multiple alerts to voters to warn them when they are skipping a race — an undervote.

So, let me get this straight... the machine is supposed to keep mistakes from happening, but there's no way to check and be sure it's actually doing what it's supposed to be doing. Have I got it? And this is not a problem, because the machine CAN'T make a mistake...

We all know where this is leading. Directly after the election there will be much screaming, wailing, and gnashing of teeth because they won't even have hanging chads to stare at. There will be NOTHING. No audit trail, no pieces of paper, no way to say, "yes this is the correct count". And they are saying this won't cause any problems...

Oh yeah and the AP spin...

The electronic voting machines are a response to Florida's 2000 presidential election fiasco, where thousands of punchcard ballots were improperly marked.

Guess they're getting ready to tell us how the new machines don't work either and that's why the candidates they support aren't getting into office. It should be a fun election.

Comments

[Jack]

Wired News has been reporting problems with electronic voting machines for at least six months (if not longer). I think AP is just finally noticing and saying it's now "relevant". That's the problem with profit driven news services, they don't report on things until they decide they're "relevant" enough to capture the eyeballs to look at the advertisements.

At least Wired News was raising the alarm (not just in Florida, but in California and elsewhere) long ago. A voting system with no audit trail is frightening, even discounting deliberate fraud. Given how unstable every computer and network I deal with are, a hardcopy audit trail should be a mandatory part of ANY voting system, even one designed to "eliminate the need for recounts".

[Harvey]

On the bright side, I seriously doubt that this election will be close enough for the voting machine problems to be cited as the reason for the Democratic loss, even by the barkingest of moonbats.

Although I'm sure Michael Moore will make a documentary out of it :-)