The scantron-style ballots I’ve seen are dark-ink compatible. I don’t know of any machine that can erase a variety of unknown inks from paper without a trace.
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We use ink and scan here. The pen is a permanent marker that soaks into the paper, and the paper seems to be designed to soak it up without smudging. You aren’t getting it off without destroying the paper.
Ballots run through the machine twice, then drop into a locked bin the scanner is mounted over. The ballot box and the scanner are essentially separate units. And they’re transported separately. So if you have access to the machine you don’t neccisarily have access to the ballots.
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Bad calibration causing a “touch” over one candidate’s name to register as a touch on a different candidate’s name, would be my guess. I would only guess that because my car has a (annoying) touch screen that requires recalibration every time the battery is disconnected. It makes you touch a target on the screen four times to register your touch point.
ETA: As @sirdigbypollo points out, my guess is wrong. If it was registering the touch wrong, it would show up wrong on the printout. Hmm.
If they were miscalibrated in that fashion, then the machines could not have correctly recorded the vote on the paper receipt.
- The user inputs something on the touch screen.
- The machine’s software tallies the inputs in memory.
- The machine’s software records the inputs onto the paper receipt.
If #3 is correct, then #1 is probably not the problem. (“probably” because it’s possible, although highly unlikely, that #3 could also be in error such that it also changed the inputs so that they ended up correct.)
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Good catch. That doesn’t make sense.
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I believe it’s synecdoche. They’re using the term “touch screen” to refer to the whole voting machine.
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Precisely, but it’s the sinister kind of synecdoche that leads to concepts being fused together in one head, and leads to people thinking the problem is one thing when it’s another.
It also doesn’t really make sense in the context of the article. “The touch screens failed, but the backups had the correct vote.” They’re thinking the “touch screen (computer)” as one thing, and the “paper backup” as another, ignoring the fact that one produces the other. It’s the kind of error you make when the synecdoche has messed up your brain. Yes you know the computer makes the backup, but you’re calling it a “touch screen,” and you also know that touch screens have their own specific problems like calibration, so since you’ve called it a touch screen you think it’s a touch screen problem.
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In this timeline, that’s as close as we’re going to get to GOP morality.
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I don’t think the ExpressVote machine marks a ballot that you could otherwise fill out by hand. It looks like the machines kicks out a receipt that you can inspect. Check out the image here.
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/12/03/why-voters-should-mark-ballots-by-hand/
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Along with healthcare pricing, the furore about voting machines is something that always boggles my mind about the US.
Here you vote by hand-making marks paper, and this article shows there’s a certain amount of discretion in how those marks might be interpreted:
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In Italy we have paper ballots, was a counting agent for some election.
Basically if one is blind and has a medical certificate could nominate a tutor that will help to write on the paper ballot. Same if someone has ALS and is on a wheelchair.
Actually for people that are bedlocked there are some mobile voting unit that will go at houses of the people that can’t move.
Problem solved.
Besides the all manual method works because to rig the election you have to bribe a lot of people and there are a lot of people watching you when you cont the votes.
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GOP operatives built the machines, so I guess the answer is a resounding ‘H E L L. no’
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You can do that here in the US. Problem being that this is administered by humans, and can be manipulated. People can be denied access to help with their ballots, or resources can be restricted to prevent anyone from getting help. The same way you can selectively reduce the number of polling places or voting equipment in particular neighborhoods to impact the vote. So the more people who can vote unassisted, without some manipulable step like getting a medical certificate, the better.
Or you simply wander off with ballot boxes between the polling places, alter their contents, or even just create plausible suspicion that this has taken place so that whole boxes of ballots need to be discarded.
Because only the ballots record the votes, once you do that there is no way to know what the impact was and whether an election result is valid.
This is probably the classic, and most common method of election fraud. And the US has a long history of that sort of thing being used to disadvantage specific groups. Though predominantly at the state and local level, so it doesn’t require great expense or lots of people. Just partisan election workers, or loyal sheriffs.
Things like counting ballots on site (difficult without machines), and creating redundant, checkable records (impossible to do properly without machines) are intended to help prevent this.
The issues and noise about the machines come down to a couple of things.
First a lot of the machines used in the US are just poorly made, unreliable and over expensive. Which causes delays and lines at polling places, which lowers turnout. And selectively lowering turnout lets you manipulate elections on much grander scale than losing a few ballot boxes.
Second. Since the machines are now computers, they now have computer style security issues. And most of them have been designed without any concern for controlling that. When the voting machine can be hacked you got serious questions about whatever records they’re keeping. Whether they’re valid, how to prove their valid. And even if those records are valid, they can be broken or manipulated to magnify number 1. If you can make machines go down for 30 minutes every 15 votes, you cause lines and lower turnout.
Third. Since many of these voting machines don’t use a hand ballot, independent of the machine, as the input. There’s no alternative record to check the machines against. And no fall back if the machines fail. Which means you can’t deal with 1 or 2.
Voting or counting machines aren’t the only solution to this. Vote by mail works even better in a lot of ways (and requires hand ballots by its nature). But these things didn’t spring up because ATM manufacturers thought they’d be a good way to make money. They’re a response to actual problems, that have actually repeatedly happened in the US, and from what I recall are pretty common in Italy.
People are pissed about it because its not being done well. And that’s increasing our election problems, not solving the problems it was meant to solve.
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Always counted the ballots on site, the ballots with the votes never left the room, and in 6 people and a TI-36 was quite fast to do.
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And I’m sure that was just as practical and error free at polling places that saw tens of thousands of people.
To say nothing of the fact that the US has 5x Italy’s population spread over 30x the land mass. This is very much a scale problem.
If you have time, this is a fascinating, and kinda terrifying, look into what happens when you trust computers too much.
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She only acknowledged the fact she didn’t have a drop cloth big enough to cover a steaming lump the size of Godzilla. Anything smaller, she would have hit it with some whitewash and perfume, and declared victory.
I really love this quote: the machines are “locked away for 20 days after an election according to state law.” Riiiiiight, like that means they can’t be tampered with BEFORE the election. And of course, there’s always the question of who keeps the keys? Recount or not, this still stinks like last week’s fish.
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