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New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Counts 135,000 Test Ballots

15 points by TechBro8615 5y ago

EricE 5y ago
They probably need to "fortify" the election more better.
jeffrallen 5y ago
To the person who is about to say that blockchain e-voting could have avoided this, just remember that it takes a competent elections administration system (people, technology, processes, laws, culture) to run any election, and this one just proved itself incompetent. And it won't be the last one either.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Or somebody didn't want it to work right.
lp0_on_fire 5y ago
Can anyone think of a legitimate reason why there needs to be 135,000 test ballots to begin with?
- mr-wendel 5y ago
  Lots of reasons probably: - Scalability: how long does it take to process ballets to create the electronic records? - Error handling: there may be lots of permutations being tested (dark marks, light marks, `x` vs `/`, marks going out of bounds, etc) - Realism: being able to roughly represent what will actually happen in "live" mode and think through scenarios that limited test data won't highlight
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    Yup. One part of any such test has to involve a large load--I wouldn't want to certify something like that without testing it against a load at least as large as anything it's likely to encounter in a production environment. Long ago I spent *weeks* narrowing down a load-caused fault, then figuring out how to reproduce it with nothing but the operating system. (Cisco, it was completely irrelevant what software was throwing the load at your switch! When I reproduced it from the command line they accepted it was their problem and at that point it was between management and Cisco, I wasn't involved.)
happynacho 5y ago
Tell me again why the 2020 count was totally 100% accurate.
- wan23 5y ago
  Because if there were some major anomaly someone would have noticed, just like they did 10 minutes after these (unofficial, preliminary) results were published.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  That's a strawman. Nobody is seriously claiming the count was "totally 100% accurate". The serious assertion is that Trump's claims that the election was stolen are, to quote Trump's attorney general, "bullshit".
- frombody 5y ago
  Can I ask you to please review the HN guidelines on posting. There is a link called guidelines at the bottom of the page. If you want to participate in flamebait, it's best to keep it in the comments over at reddit.

15 points by TechBro8615 5y ago

They probably need to "fortify" the election more better.

To the person who is about to say that blockchain e-voting could have avoided this, just remember that it takes a competent elections administration system (people, technology, processes, laws, culture) to run any election, and this one just proved itself incompetent. And it won't be the last one either.

LorenPechtel 5y ago
Or somebody didn't want it to work right.

lp0_on_fire 5y ago

Can anyone think of a legitimate reason why there needs to be 135,000 test ballots to begin with?

mr-wendel 5y ago
Lots of reasons probably: - Scalability: how long does it take to process ballets to create the electronic records? - Error handling: there may be lots of permutations being tested (dark marks, light marks, `x` vs `/`, marks going out of bounds, etc) - Realism: being able to roughly represent what will actually happen in "live" mode and think through scenarios that limited test data won't highlight
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Yup. One part of any such test has to involve a large load--I wouldn't want to certify something like that without testing it against a load at least as large as anything it's likely to encounter in a production environment. Long ago I spent *weeks* narrowing down a load-caused fault, then figuring out how to reproduce it with nothing but the operating system. (Cisco, it was completely irrelevant what software was throwing the load at your switch! When I reproduced it from the command line they accepted it was their problem and at that point it was between management and Cisco, I wasn't involved.)

happynacho 5y ago

Tell me again why the 2020 count was totally 100% accurate.

wan23 5y ago
Because if there were some major anomaly someone would have noticed, just like they did 10 minutes after these (unofficial, preliminary) results were published.
nate_meurer 5y ago
That's a strawman. Nobody is seriously claiming the count was "totally 100% accurate". The serious assertion is that Trump's claims that the election was stolen are, to quote Trump's attorney general, "bullshit".
frombody 5y ago
Can I ask you to please review the HN guidelines on posting. There is a link called guidelines at the bottom of the page. If you want to participate in flamebait, it's best to keep it in the comments over at reddit.