5 ms·

I know that this will remain at the bottom of this thread, because it doesn't have enough conspiracy theory in it, but does anyone really think that this is act

• VMG 14y ago
  But what is the other explanation then?
  • usaar333 14y ago
    touchscreen calibration errors or related software glitches. I've certainly seen my own phone get screwed up enough on occasion that a touch on point x registered at y.
    • takeda64 14y ago
      except the guy who recorded it claims that selecting candidate that's below Obama worked correctly.
      • usaar333 14y ago
        From my phone experiences, it isn't always a matter of a touch being shifted up/down by X everyone. Sometimes individual areas are screwed up. (as a simple experiment, I can put some water droplets on my nexus S and things go haywire unpredictably). I'm doubtful this is malicious not so much because I'm some idealist that believes voter fraud doesn't happen, but because of all ways to commit fraud, this is a but ridiculous - it's obvious to everyone the machine is recording wrong and it will be noticed.
  • m_myers 14y ago
    Hanlon's Razor would suggest a bug in the hardware or software as the more likely explanation. Unfortunately, when politics are involved, people default to assuming malice far more than they perhaps should.
    • mcantelon 14y ago
      These voting machines flaws were widely reported last election. They always favoured the Republican candidate. Here's court testimony of an developer who was asked to create one of these rigged systems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVmsaDS_FwY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVmsaDS_FwY
      • briandear 14y ago
        They don't "always" favor the republican. That's just hyperbole. There have been widespread reports of Romney votes being altered -- days ago. I think our biggest problem is voter registration flaws and the lack of being able to identify that the person listed on the form is the actual one voting. We should also be dipping people's thumbs in ink like they do in Africa and Mexico to ensure that people don't vote twice. Voter fraud is far more common than alleged insidious voting machine malfunctions. Those machines are checked by reps of both parties and under heavy, continual scrutiny. Voter rolls, on the other hand, or absentee ballots are rife with fraud. For example, thousands of military members won't get to vote this election because the department of defense failed to mail the ballots on time. In 2010, I lived in China and didn't get my absentee ballot until 1 month after the election, even though I requested it 6 months prior from the US Consulate in Shanghai. I was disenfranchised like millions of other legal voters, both civilian and military. Some people are more concerned about some old minority lady allegedly with the inability to get a free photo id, yet ignore the military and overseas vote. Yet for the old minority lady, she need only go to the local courthouse to get things straightened out, while a solider in Kabul doesn't have that luxury. Another problem is blantant violations of election law by generally Democrat election judges. Examples from today: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/11/06/judge-orders-obama-mural-covered-at-northeast-philadelphia-polling-place/ http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/11/06/judge-orders-oba... http://mrctv.org/blog/obama-poster-hanging-florida-polling-station http://mrctv.org/blog/obama-poster-hanging-florida-polling-s... http://washingtonexaminer.com/philly-gop-poll-inspectors-being-ousted-for-dems/article/2512714#.UJkm9sXA-4d http://washingtonexaminer.com/philly-gop-poll-inspectors-bei... And voter intimidation here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/6/problems-black-panthers-surface-pa-polling-places/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/6/problems-blac... If the KKK were to show up at a Philidelphia polling site, there'd be cries of outrage and National Guard deployments, but since it's the New Black Panthers, it's ignored.
  • sixothree 14y ago
    Maybe too many people voted for Obama causing that part of the screen to fail?
  • rmc 14y ago
    That since Romney and Obama are going to each get lots of votes that the touch screen has been completly worn away and is now not very accurate.
    • danielweber 14y ago
      I wonder what happens if you push on the screen over a candidate's name really really really hard for a minute or so. Not hard enough to knock the whole machine over, but way harder than "touch." It doesn't even need to be malicious. Maybe someone really liked Obama.
• regularfry 14y ago
  If you assume that the team developing the software consists of more than one person, and a hypothetical vote-stuffer wants to minimise the number of people who know about the vote-stuffing attempt, they might not have any choice about who on the team actually implements the stuffing. It might be that they only have influence over the guy doing the UI. Or it could be an attempt at plausible deniability. If all the machines need calibrating, but an uncalibrated machine just so happens to mis-register votes in the direction you want, that would give you an edge because you can guarantee that some machines won't be deployed correctly.
  • stevewillows 14y ago
    In the video they should have tested for calibration. It suggests that the votes are being forced to Mitt when really the screen is just off. Further to this, why aren't the names randomized?!
    • jlgreco 14y ago
      > "Further to this, why aren't the names randomized?!" Do you know how many millions of lines of code they would need to add to do this? Voting machine manufactures have repeatedly proven themselves the most incompetent people in technology.
• mcantelon 14y ago
  >I know that this will remain at the bottom of this thread, because it doesn't have enough conspiracy theory in it, but does anyone really think that this is actual vote tampering? This exact thing happened last election. Why does it only happen to the advantage of Republican candidates?
  • kbutler 14y ago
    Posted above what I found w/ 30 seconds of googling: Same touch one candidate, other candidate gets the vote defect, same dismissive attitude from poll workers, only difference is it favored the opposite party.
• jpwagner 14y ago
  I agree. Has no one here used a touchscreen on an airplane seat before, it's usually more than one finger width offset...
  • huhtenberg 14y ago
    Re-read the article. The guy tested just for that and it wasn't a case.
    • JoeCortopassi 14y ago
      He says a lot of things, but amazingly only shows us the one thing that can be easily debunked as a glitch/error.
      • artursapek 14y ago
        Thank you for being the voice of reason. It's a fucking calibration error. I hate sensationalism like this.
        • vehementi 14y ago
          He says he tested that it wasn't a calibration error. How is it sensationalism? Think first.
        • sturmeh 14y ago
          How is it a calibration error? He clearly says he tested for calibration error, and it wasn't the case. This is of course, we assume he's not lying.
          • skeletonjelly 14y ago
            His testing isn't thorough. He shows us the incorrect voting, and doesn't have enough sense to prove the other buttons are fine with his video camera.
          • huhtenberg 14y ago
• raldi 14y ago
  I would have voted for this comment, but because of the implicit plea for votes in the first line, I downvoted it instead.
• aneth4 14y ago
  It may very well be that changing the UI map is the easiest way to accomplish this. Any particular person may not have access to the backend code, but may have access to the code that maps screen positions to selection. Having no knowledge of this machine in particular, I can't say much more, but it's certainly feasible that this is the easiest or only method to modify the outcome of a vote. Based on the description and assuming it's accurate, we could conclude that there is some sort of mapping of the display to vote selection that is configurable locally. This makes sense, as every locality has different ballots - school districts, etc. We do know that these things tend to be pretty poorly written, so you also can't assume even reasonable or typical component design. I don't think your logic is valid.
• colkassad 14y ago
  Plausible deniability?
• tzs 14y ago
  If I were tampering with voting, I would do it on the front end, not the back end. That's because if the code is ever discovered on the back end, it is damning. A misaligned or badly proportioned mapping from touch coordinates to ballot options is much easier to explain away as an error or incompetence. Doing it at the front end won't flip as many votes because many people will see the incorrect registration and stab at the touch screen a few more times until they find the right spot. But some will not notice, and in a close race that could be good enough.
• akjetma 14y ago
  There are people who are so out of touch with technology that they might not understand the (to us, incredibly obvious and clear) feedback the UI is providing, and might overlook it or be scared of pressing the screen again. Grandmothers and curmudgeons. It seems ridiculous to be unable to comprehend something that would be as familiar as using a hand calculator to people like me and you, but there are people out there who are afraid to touch the power button on their computers because they think they'll burn their house down or get a virus or something. Imagine people like that trying to learn a brand new user interface in the span of 5 minutes while people are waiting in line for them to finish. It's a small population of people but it could conceivably make a difference given the right conditions. edit: I forgot to add that this would be a good way to commit voter fraud and still have plausible deniability. Also, it would probably be more cost efficient to bribe someone for this small bug that gives a 0.5% advantage than it would be to pay for the campaigning that makes a 0.5% difference.
  • nandemo 14y ago
    That's not the point. Yes, there might be people who will ignore the UI feedback and cast the wrong vote. The point is that, if you're going to tamper it, you'd rather tamper the back end. As it is, if this is happening to a lot of people, many of them are bound to report it and that risk completely outweighs any gain from the "grandmother" group. In any case, I'm skeptical of the tampering hypothesis because only one person reported and filmed it.
• tokipin 14y ago
  normally i'd agree but i don't see it out of line at all. just take a look at all the Herculean efforts that Republicans have made in the past two years to reduce the ability for people to vote