
Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes - jipumarino
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/11/06/reddit-user-captures-video-of-2012-voting-machines-altering-votes/
======
JoeCortopassi
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_?

I mean, why on earth would you tamper with a voting machine so that it stuffs
the ballot, but have it update the UI so that the user can see and report the
error? This should fall to the way side of failing basic logic, but it doesn't
because people want a sensationalist article to argue over. Changing votes
would be much easier to do on the back end, and would have the additional
benefit of never being detected by the user

~~~
VMG
But what is the other explanation then?

~~~
m_myers
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
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>

~~~
briandear
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-
oba...](http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/11/06/judge-orders-obama-mural-
covered-at-northeast-philadelphia-polling-place/)

[http://mrctv.org/blog/obama-poster-hanging-florida-
polling-s...](http://mrctv.org/blog/obama-poster-hanging-florida-polling-
station)

[http://washingtonexaminer.com/philly-gop-poll-inspectors-
bei...](http://washingtonexaminer.com/philly-gop-poll-inspectors-being-ousted-
for-dems/article/2512714#.UJkm9sXA-4d)

And voter intimidation here:
[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/6/problems-
blac...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/6/problems-black-
panthers-surface-pa-polling-places/)

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.

~~~
mcantelon
>They don't "always" favor the republican. That's just hyperbole.

I've yet to see a credible instance of vote machine "malfunction" favoring
Democrats covered by a reputable source, but if you have any links I'd be
interested as it's certainly possible.

>Voter fraud is far more common than alleged insidious voting machine
malfunctions.

Due to the nature of electric voting without a paper trail, there's no way to
make this assertion as contemporary electronic voting can't be audited.

>Those machines are checked by reps of both parties and under heavy, continual
scrutiny.

Not quite.

See: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/06/experimental-software-
discr...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/06/experimental-software-discreetly-
installed-on-ohio-voting-machines/)

Electronic voting in its current form is a remarkably bad idea. It invites
corruption as a scale that requires much more resources than traditional
analog voting fraud.

~~~
kbutler
30 seconds with google found:

[http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/malfunctio...](http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/malfunctioning-
voting-machines-van-loads-of-non-english-speakers-bussed-in-to-vote/)
"""touched the screen to vote for Mitt Romney but the machine lit up the name
of Barack Obama. Stevens tried a second time and again the machine lit up
Obama when she selected Romney. She tried a third time and finally Romney’s
name lit up. Stevens reported the malfunction to board of elections personnel
and was told the voting machine had been “acting up all day.” """

[http://selwynduke.typepad.com/selwyndukecom/2012/10/obama-
ge...](http://selwynduke.typepad.com/selwyndukecom/2012/10/obama-gets-
endorsement-of-voting-machine-in-nc.html)

""" Sher Coromalis ... says she cast her ballot for Governor Mitt Romney, but
every time she entered her vote the machine defaulted to President Obama....

Marie Haydock, who also voted at the Bur-Mil Park polling location, had the
same problem. ... Is it just me, or is this problem that “arises every
election” one where malfunctioning machines always seem to err in favor of
Democrats? """

~~~
mcantelon
Established media sources (preferably with some statistical analysis showing
pro-Democrat anomalies) rather than random blogs would be nice, but thanks.

~~~
JoeCortopassi
As opposed to some random Reddit user?

~~~
mcantelon
A random person's video carries more weight than a random person's
unsubstantiated claim because video is, to some degree, evidence (it would be
possible to fake, but would at least require some work).

~~~
JoeCortopassi
But there is no real evidence. He shows a video of a garden variety bug/error
with resistive touch screens, then makes some sensationalist claims in his
comments that are completely unsubstantiated.

~~~
mcantelon
Here's a video from 2008 of the exact same problem.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MHwNZkNFlI>

Is there any video of these sorts of "garden variety" bugs happening in favor
of Democrats?

~~~
JoeCortopassi
Skip to the relevant part of the video [53 second], and the guy clearly
touches the bottom of the McCain section with his finger, then rolls his
finger down. My point still stands though: The user sees the wrong selection
immediately, and can notify someone or try again. The only scandal here is
that this is even a story

<http://youtu.be/0MHwNZkNFlI?t=54s>

------
beatpanda
This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. If you're in the U.S. I highly
reccomend being a poll worker in a contentious district in a swing state if
you ever get the chance. I was in a suburb of Denver last election and saw all
kinds of shenanigans, from people pulling fire alarms to clear out the polling
places to people walking aaround with laptops "checking voter registration"
(actually just lying to people to get them to go home).

There was also this, a few weeks ago: [http://www.nationalmemo.com/man-
connected-to-virginia-gop-ar...](http://www.nationalmemo.com/man-connected-to-
virginia-gop-arrested-for-destroying-voter-registration-forms/)

The fact is that there is a concerted, coordinated effort to tamper with the
vote every single election. I have no way of knowing whether this specific
incident was malicious, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if it was.

~~~
hahainternet
That's just disturbing. The last time I went to vote I walked to a local
school, waited politely in a queue, went and filled in my paper ballot and
went home. A couple of people there were monitoring but nobody tried to
influence or interrupt or anything. It was very British.

~~~
detst
That's exactly my experience voting in the US. I suspect these stories are the
exception but no less disturbing.

------
kevinalexbrown
If there were one aspect of electronic voting I could change it would be the
following: allow electronic votes to be reviewed by each individual at a later
date, from two independent organizations. Each vote gets sent to two
independent electronic counting organizations, and each let you verify your
vote after the election, with an (anonymous) confirmation number issued at
voting time.

If enough people cry foul to rule out a large group collectively lying or
forgetting their confirmation numbers, fraud would be much easier to establish
and localize. Moreover, requiring each independent database of votes to match
to within some margin would also decrease the likelihood of fraud by requiring
collusion between both organizations.

EDIT: Note that the confirmation number would be issued to you anonymously and
sans receipt - there would be no way to _prove_ your vote - you could have
found some random confirmation number, and no recourse for a single citizen
crying foul. The point, rather, is that if several hundred or thousand
individuals noticed that their vote seemed to have changed, the likelihood
that they were all making it up or forgetting their confirmation numbers would
decrease substantially.

~~~
eli
Definitely not! It's a secret ballot -- you cannot have any way to prove which
candidates you voted for.

~~~
kevinalexbrown
What about, e.g. taking a video of your vote as the original Reddit poster
did?

I think this verification may already be a reality. The alternative is to
disallow _any_ form of verification, as with the Reddit poster, but then we
lose the ability to perform checks on the voting procedure, and would never
have known about this current anomaly.

What's missing, though, is the proof that who you voted for is who the vote
was internally _counted_ for.

Due to anonymity you can't individually _prove_ a confirmation number belongs
to you - you could have found one on the street or made up some random number,
but if 10000 people claim that their initial vote does not match the confirmed
vote, it's worth looking into more carefully.

~~~
uhwuggawuh
Even taking video is illegal, as that could also be used as evidence of voting
for a particular candidate, allowing candidates to buy votes.

~~~
briandear
Taking video is not illegal in all states.

[http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/documenting-your-
vote...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/documenting-your-
vote-2008#StateResources)

------
morsch
The shenanigans you seem to tolerate during elections are just
incomprehensible to us foreigners. The number of horror stories I've heard in
the last couple of weeks regarding everything from just weirdness of the
system to blatant manipulation is farcical.

It's possible that I'm getting a bleaker picture than reality, I suppose,
since I only read about the broken stuff and not the instances where
everything just works.

~~~
pnathan
(1) We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population.

(2) We are OK publicizing it.

(3) Probability would indicate that we'll have a certain error, and it'll be
shouted about.

\---

But it's _very strange_ that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one
particular candidate, no? :)

~~~
citricsquid
> But it's very strange that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one
> particular candidate, no? :)

The internet loves Obama. There are many stories of people that support Obama
cheating the system (right now there's a popular story of someone admitting on
Facebook to voting for Obama 4 times...) and that isn't on the front page of
HN, when that is absolutely confirmed to be a misuse of the system.

Everything that is a disadvantage for Obama is naturally going to get more
attention, because _most_ of the internet age that use sites like reddit and
HN are the sort that want progress.

I'll bet there are machines that have this problem (assuming this is not an
isolated incident and his a software/hardware issue) that vote for Obama when
Romney is clicked, but that won't be big news in this circle of news because
who cares about Romney here?

Edit: here you go, same problem that affects Romney votes on another machine
[http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/story/Voting-
machines...](http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/story/Voting-machines-
switch-Romney-votes-to-Obama/m9dR8WDjbUKX8OFu4meIFQ.cspx)

~~~
marshallp
The republicans are the party of liars. Who is more likely to actually commit
these crimes? Republicans. Even the 4 votes thing you came up with is probably
republicans spreading lies.

~~~
baltimore
Seriously? Why are you even here (HN)? This place does not suffer trolls
lightly.

~~~
mkr-hn
HN loves trolls as long as they aren't lazy about it.

------
salman89
Voting machines need to be a lot better than this or not exist at all, but
does anyone actually think that IF this machine was altering votes, it would
alter it in this fashion with a UI element tied to the alteration? Seems more
like a crappy touch screen.

~~~
jneal
This was my thought exactly. If someone was going through the trouble of
altering votes, it would make no sense to make note of this within UI
elements, it could just as easily "secretly" change the votes for 1/8 (just my
theoretical magical number) voters and alter the results just enough without
being noticeable.

~~~
swang
Except this just frustrates the voter and maybe he doesn't bother voting for
Obama at all. There's no accusation of "altering" the votes because how do you
track, "Touchscreen didn't select Obama, voter just gave up?"

~~~
sharkweek
Donning my tin foil hat for a minute here -- I think if I were to try and
attempt to commit voter fraud through the machines, I'd make it this obvious
intentionally so it seemed like a legitimate accident to those who noticed;
"It's too obvious to be fraud"

It would probably cause a small dent and shift by people who don't notice or
are confused (elderly).

~~~
evan_
If you had complete control over a voting machine, it wouldn't make any sense
to try to lower turnout or confuse anyone- you'd want people to vote and leave
without having noticed anything, so you could change their vote.

The result here is that the voting machine was taken out of duty and will be
investigated. If the strategy was to make the error so outlandish that nobody
would believe it was happening, the strategy has failed.

Since it's pretty obvious that this would be the outcome, it's not a good
strategy, and is therefore not likely to have been enacted.

------
llambda
What I've read[1][2] in regard to this incident is that it is most likely a
calibration issue: i.e. the touch screen is improperly calibrated and as a
result is not selecting the proper region of the screen. Now this is
concerning because it likely means other machines could be or are
miscalibrated. However the important takeaway here is that this is not some
malicious attempt to rig the vote. If that were the case the likely method
would be completely invisible from the UI; why would an attacker bother to
actually show a user they were being manipulated? Of course, they wouldn't.

[1] Joseph Hall comments here, also provides a link to further commentary by
him: [http://gawker.com/5958114/an-expert-weighs-in-on-that-
viral-...](http://gawker.com/5958114/an-expert-weighs-in-on-that-viral-reddit-
voter-fraud-video)

[2] [http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/the-truth-about-voting-
machine...](http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/the-truth-about-voting-machines)

~~~
TwistedWeasel
The consumer electronics industry has shipped hundreds of millions of touch
screens in the last few years and i've not seen a single article complaining
that they opened up their new tablet/phone to find it mis-calibrated and that
their touches were off my such a huge margin. Why are voting machines
apparently subject to calibration problems that other touch screen devices are
not?

~~~
jerf
I have owned a ton of touch screen devices. None of them were miscalibrated,
even after years of use.

I have used a ton of touch screen devices in public. I've encountered quite a
few that were miscalibrated.

Public devices put up with abuse that your private devices do not.

~~~
TwistedWeasel
Honestly curious - what kind of abuse could cause a calibration error?

My kids abuse my iPad pretty heavily but generally smacking on the screen with
their hands and fingers a lot but I still have never seen it mis-calculate a
touch.

~~~
georgemcbay
iPads used capacitive touchscreens which aren't prone to the same sorts of
calibration issues that resistive touchscreens are.

I don't know much about electronic voting machines but I wouldn't be surprised
if they mostly used resistive touchscreens (which are historically much
cheaper to produce).

------
cloudwalking
I am a red-blooded technologist, but I think voting should be done on paper
ballots. Call me a luddite, but it's just too easy to manipulate votes--either
at the time of voting or in post-processing--with an electronic voting
machine.

That being said, the only conceivable way to have a secure electronic voting
process is to use a completely open source system. Open source hardware and
software, with publicly viewable results.

~~~
danielweber
If your plan to secure the machines is to have the source be open, you have
already failed. You need a system that works well _even if_ the source has
been altered.

Paper ballots have issues, too. They are _different_ issues, and largely
unseen by the general public until you have a really close election and have
to use human judgment to decide whether that mark counts as a vote or not.

~~~
revelation
And here I thought in the Turing year of 2012 people would finally start to
understand what it means that any electronical voting machine contains a
Turing equivalent machine.

No magic can make the halting problem decidable.

~~~
EvilTerran
An electronic voting machine doesn't _have_ to be Turing-complete, surely? It
would require especially-fabricated non-Turing-complete chips / ICBs, and some
very simple interface like an LED bank and good old-fashioned physical buttons
(as a touch-screen LCD unit alone is probably turing-complete), but I'm pretty
sure it'd be possible to devise a specialised electronic voting system that
couldn't have its behaviour altered without physical modification.

[edit PS] Of course, this is purely academic. You might as well fantasise
about a voting system made of Babbage-esque clockwork.

------
hcarvalhoalves
I wouldn't attribute to malice what can be explained by a faulty touch screen.
These incidents hurt the trust on the election process, though.

The machines used on Brazillian elections are simpler but much better thought
out, since it's impossible to input the wrong candidate. You have to input the
number of the candidate, review his information and photo, then press
"confirm" button. It doesn't present a list of candidates to choose from, so
there are no biases. The US should adopt a similar machine. [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Brazil#The_Brazili...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Brazil#The_Brazilian_voting_machines)

------
ricardobeat
I can't fathom why would you even choose touchscreens for voting machines.
It's a simple interface, mechanical buttons are much better. They are more
durable, offer tactile feedback and can be used by people with visual
impairment.

------
ditoa
Looks like a calibration issue. They should have included selecting other
candidates in the list. While not good enough (voting machines should be
"perfect") calling it "altering votes" is a little much. It shows you that it
has registered the wrong candidate, I would call this incorrectly registering
input.

~~~
hornbaker
Did you read the article?

"I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to
actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I
deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping
very closely together to find the ‘active areas’. From the top of Romney’s
button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama’s name was all
active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the
Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama.
Stein’s button was fine. All other buttons worked fine."

~~~
naveensundar
Why are those not filmed?

~~~
DannyBee
FWIW: Using a cell phone to take video in polling places in most states is
prohibited, and in general "frowned upon" in others. I would not be surprised
if he simply took a video as quickly as he could and then left. I agree it
would have been a more believable incident if there was more video.

Based on the reddit story, I think this was Central PA, which definitely falls
into the "not allowed to take video" category.

[http://www.citmedialaw.org/state-law-documenting-
vote-2012#P...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/state-law-documenting-
vote-2012#Pennsylvania)

------
cwe
NBC News confirming they've removed this particular machine because of this:

[http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/06/machine-turns-vote-for-
obama-...](http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/06/machine-turns-vote-for-obama-into-
one-for-romney/)

~~~
danielweber
Which is proper. The report that the volunteer said "everything will be okay"
is the worst part of this. Systems need to recognize and isolate damage, not
assume it will never occur.

~~~
trhtrsh
Really, intentionally disregarding a broken machine is felony election
tampering. We shouldn't have bored old ladies running precincts, we should
cough up for paid, trained professionals.

------
tokenadult
The system here in Minnesota works much better. All ballots are paper ballots
that are indelibly marked by voters. My wife and I voted this morning in our
busy precinct in Minnesota, where there are some tight statewide contests
about constitutional amendments and perhaps the most contested race for our
state's House of Representatives of any electoral district in our state. As
usual, we voted by marking bubble-shaped spaces on a paper ballot with a black
pen. That provides an excellent audit trail for the voting. Machines can count
such paper ballots very rapidly, and they are user-friendly for voters, and
there is little ambiguity about how to vote. Minnesota has had ballots like
this for at least a decade.

But even at that, when a state has a razor-thin margin in an election, it can
be maddening to figure out what happened.

[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/11/franken-c...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/11/franken-
coleman.html)

[http://www.factcheck.org/elections/mining_the_minnesota_reco...](http://www.factcheck.org/elections/mining_the_minnesota_recount.html)

The election to the United States Senate from Minnesota in 2008 was too close
to call before the election, and even after millions of Minnesotans voted for
one of three major party candidates, the margin between the top two
candidates, Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman, was so close that
the margin was only one-hundredth of 1 percent of the votes cast in the
election. That election really underscored the slogan "every vote counts."

It's quite indefensible to use a voting system that doesn't leave a literal
paper trail. The technology is well proven. But what really gives most
election results legitimacy and staying power is a wide enough margin among
votes cast by people who show up to vote that the old saying "Vox populi, vox
Dei" can apply to the result. The people speak, and even the voters who didn't
agree with the plurality have to listen. It's appalling that any state would
have a voting system that could obscure what the consensus of the voters is.

AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several replies to this comment. Reading other
replies posted to this thread since I first wrote this comment, I see several
mentions of the systems in the Pacific Northwest states of having mail ballots
mailed to voters. When I lived in Taiwan, more than a decade ago, I had a post
office box there. Sometimes I would receive postal mail from the United States
for the previous holders of that post office box, including State of Oregon
ballots for two different Oregon voters (who were presumably each other's
roommates while living in Taiwan). I always wondered, without giving into the
temptation, whether I could have successfully filled out one (or both?) of
those ballots and mailed them back from Taiwan to cast votes in an Oregon
election. By contrast, I was never able to cast a Minnesota absentee ballot
from Taiwan, even the time when I should have been regarded as having a stable
permanent residence address here in the United States. So I missed out on
voting in both the 1984 election and the ever-so-controversial election of
2000. I have no clear awareness of how mail ballots are authenticated as
having been mailed by the voter to whom they belong (a signature on the
envelope?) and hope that someone is checking to prevent those ballots from
being misused.

~~~
MartinCron
Bringing up the Coleman/Franken election reminds me of my particular pet
peeve. When the margin of victory is less than the margin of error, it's
impossible to know the will of the people. One hundredth of one percent is not
within any reasonable margin of error.

~~~
mherdeg
Sure, and in scenarios like that, perhaps the best thing to do is to flip a
coin.

Instead of going to all the expense of flipping a coin, though, you could just
take the person who seemed to get the most votes (after you've counted them
all really hard to make sure you're within the margin of error). Just an
arbitrary rule, no biggie.

~~~
MartinCron
_perhaps the best thing to do is to flip a coin_

Or have a runoff election, or have instant-runoff voting. Having elections
determined by real or statistical coin-flips undermines the (important) story
of self-rule.

~~~
danielweber
You can't get rid of edge cases by moving the edge.

~~~
gordonguthrie
Yes you can. If there is a tie in the UK the result is chosen on a cut of the
cards.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england/8668624.stm)

The candidates agree, and the winner and loser both accept the outcome, works
for me.

~~~
esrauch
I'm confused by your reply. The grandparent comment was saying "You should
never flip a coin", the person you replied to said (roughly) "It's impossible
to avoid all situations where you can't measure the winner, you have to either
flip a coin or just take the person who happened to come out ahead in the vote
count".

Your link to a place where they used a coin flip isn't disagreeing with him
(nor really the grandparent, who wasn't claiming that you can't use a
coinflip, but rather that you _shouldn't_ use a coinflip).

------
wbrendel
What's wrong with paper ballots again? Serious question.

In my area (northern MA), voters are given a ballot with a bubble next to each
of the candidates' names. You use a marker to fill in the bubble next to the
candidate you want to vote for, like 6-year-olds manage to do all the time on
multiple choice tests in school. Then it gets read in by a machine, leaving a
paper trail just in case.

How are these electronic voting machines any better than that? With all the
technical/fraud issues surrounding them, wouldn't it make sense to just use
paper?

~~~
DirtyCalvinist
Electronic voting machines allow for easier customization of text for edge
cases, like a need for higher contrast, larger print or another language. A
good compromise, I think, would be to have the electronic machines print out a
human-readable paper ballot, and that would be counted as ballots used to be.
The security/checkability of the old system with the convenience of the
electronic interface.

~~~
wbrendel
Those are good arguments, but are those benefits worth the millions of dollars
we spend on these obviously flawed machines? It seems like overkill. Print
some ballots with larger print and some in whatever languages are common in
your area.

If we do have to use electronic voting machines, I like your idea of it
printing a paper ballot rather than tabulating the vote inside the machine.

~~~
trhtrsh
Millions of dollars is cheap for a properly conducted vote.

------
WrkInProgress
I wish they had also taken video of them selecting Jill Stein to see if the
entire machine was calibrated incorrectly or just the Romney/Obama section.

------
BlackNapoleon
I saw this earlier and I noted that news agencies seemed to be reluctant to
post it. CNN has been on this from the jump. I think people are afraid of it
being revealed as a fake. There is some serious validation that needs to occur
if this is the case.

------
bratao
Citing felipeko: Brazil actually has a very organized election. Aside from bad
politicians we have to chose from, the election does not have many problems.
We have a judicial system just for election (with judges and clear laws) ready
to take actions (and they do take) when something goes wrong. All election
occurs in one day, a sunday so everyone can vote, and the results usually come
in less than 4 hours, because all vote is electronic.

------
ww520
I think a system of repeatability for voting is important. Once a voter has
casted a vote, his vote should be able to be repeated without change in
different systems at will to verify that his vote has not been tampered.

The system can work like this:

\- Voter is assigned a unique ID, on his voting card issued upon verifying his
identity. He can pick a security pin for added security.

\- Voter is given a device thumb drive, RFID with some RAM, whatever storage
device.

\- Voter goes to a machine to vote. The machine cryptographically signs the
voting result with his id. The machine writes the result to his storage
device, emails him a copy, and/or puts the result on a public website. The
machine also sends the result to a central server for compilation.

\- Voter can go to any other machine on any other sites, plug in his result,
his id, and his pin to see the voting result for verification. Voter can
confirm by sending the result to central server. Or submit the signed result
to third party website to display it for verification.

\- If there's any mismatch, voter raises hell and demands to invalidate old
vote (after verifying his identity, id, and pin), revote, and burn the
tampering machine.

Edit: Id obviously means a public/private key pair.

------
forgingahead
This happened earlier as well during the early voting period (though Romney
votes were being switched for Obama -- funny how one got coverage whilst the
other didn't).

It's not some conspiracy, just a calibration error.

Source: [http://www.breitbart.com/Big-
Government/2012/11/03/Electroni...](http://www.breitbart.com/Big-
Government/2012/11/03/Electronic-Voting-Machines-In-Battleground-States-
Switching-Romney-Votes-For-Obama)

~~~
forgingahead
Google cache since Breitbart is getting hammered:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.b...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.breitbart.com%2FBig-
Government%2F2012%2F11%2F03%2FElectronic-Voting-Machines-In-Battleground-
States-Switching-Romney-Votes-For-
Obama&rlz=1C1CHFA_enUS485US486&oq=cache%3Awww.breitbart.com%2FBig-
Government%2F2012%2F11%2F03%2FElectronic-Voting-Machines-In-Battleground-
States-Switching-Romney-Votes-For-
Obama&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

------
btilly
There have been problems like this in every election with these machines.

More troubling, exit polls and voting results have routinely disagreed with
each other since 2000. In most countries that would be taken as proof that the
election was not fair. But not in the USA!

[http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-
analyst-...](http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-
proves-gop-is-stealing-elections/article20598.html) claims evidence of
systemic manipulation of the vote, with the trend strongly being in the GOP's
favor. I have not personally verified, but it would not surprise me.

Anyone who has been paying attention this election cycle knows about the
attempts by both sides to manipulate rules about who can vote, when, in ways
that advantage themselves and disadvantage each other. That happens in a lot
of elections but not to the extent of this one. With weird results such as,
because of a recent law in Ohio, polling workers have to ASK for ID, but due
to a court decision, they can't stop you from voting if you DON'T have that
ID. (Confused polling workers are sure to get this wrong.)

The general trend is that Republicans want as many barriers to voting in
person as possible, while Democrats want as many to be able to vote as
possible. That is because more marginal voters are much more likely to be
Democrat than the general population. The stated reason is "to prevent fraud"
even though there is very little evidence of such fraud in practice. On mail-
in ballots this reverses, since the GOP expects a large portion of mail-in
ballots to be from military people who are likely to vote Republican. Fraud
has been more of an issue with mail-in ballots, but obviously people are not
as worried about that.

Laws get broken as well. For instance the 2000 election was decided in
Florida, in part due to a voter purge that the courts decided was illegal. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File> for verification of
that. The lesson learned is that voter purges work, which is why Florida was
trying to do a purge this year at the last minute despite being warned that it
was illegal. Because flipping the choice for President was easily worth the
slap on the wrist they got afterwards.

There already have been laws broken this year (see
[http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57535950/man-charged-
aft...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57535950/man-charged-after-
tossing-voter-registration-forms-in-virginia/) and
[http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/fbi-
launches-...](http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/fbi-launches-
investigation-into-fraudulent-florida-voter-letters/1258211) for example), and
everyone expects the lawyers to be gainfully employed as a result.

In short, get out your popcorn. When we exercise our right to vote, the vested
interests exercise what they see as their right to manipulate the vote, and
this time there is a decent chance of fireworks.

~~~
Alex3917
"Anyone who has been paying attention this election cycle knows about the
attempts by both sides to manipulate rules about who can vote, when, in ways
that advantage themselves and disadvantage each other."

Since when have Democrats been passing laws to prevent old white people from
voting?

~~~
btilly
Democrats have tried to increase the length of time early voting happens,
increase the hours, and increase the number of voting locations. All of these
changes make it easier for people who were on the fence about voting to vote.

They do this because they know that people who might or might not vote are
much more likely than not to vote Democratic. Thus adding these people to the
vote advantages themselves and disadvantages Republicans.

It is not as nasty as voter suppression, but it is no less a form of vote
manipulation.

~~~
howeyc
You can't be serious.

More people voting == voter manipulation??!??

I would call that a MORE REPRESENTATIVE democracy.

~~~
hnal943
Dead people voting is manipulation. Just because more votes are cast doesn't
mean they are legitimate.

~~~
heliostatic
However, since the post to which you're replying specified more people voting,
not more votes, your vacuous statement is not on point. Stop fear mongering
and being a pointless pedant.

------
anonymouz
Even if this is just accidental or some weird calibration issue (weird,
because it only seems to affect one button according to the report), it just
goes to show how little confidence one can have in these machines. Does anyone
think if they can't get the touchscreen right, the remaining parts of the
system can be expected to work correctly?

The only positive thing is that such an easy to demonstrate failure might open
the eyes of the less technically educated parts of the public to how bad an
idea it is to use electronic voting machines.

Any suggested replacement of paper ballots comes with such a huge bag of
problems (sometimes inherent in the method, and not merely problems of the
implementation), and so few advantages that it puzzles me why anyone would
want to introduce them.

~~~
ricardobeat
The fact that the current implementation is not reliable doesn't make the
whole idea of electronic voting bad. We've had electronic voting for general
elections in Brazil since 2000, with very few accusations of fraud.

~~~
anonymouz
But there are very significant issues with the _principle_ of electronic
voting:

Ideally, every voter would be able to verify their own vote after the fact via
some cryptographic mechanism. But on the other hand, this mechanism should be
such that the government (or another individual trying to coerce our voter)
would _not_ be able to verify the vote -- an almost contradictory, difficult
requirement. I am not aware of such a method being employed in any large-scale
election.

In the absence of such a method, you have a heap of problems:

1) How do you make it verifiable for the general public? Even if you accept
that the general public will not be able to verify it (bad!), how would you
make it verifiable even for experts? It's almost impossible to ensure that the
code being run is the one you verified beforehand, especially on such a large
scale, so this way is out of the question. (Remember, this is a high-stakes
game, so you'd better know that your CPU in fact executes your opcodes
correctly...)

2) Electronic voting & tallying opens the door for large-scale manipulation
without leaving traces. If you want to remove 10000 paper ballots, you have to
somehow get rid of them (with people watching). 10000 votes vanishing in a
computer? No problem, just a memory operation, a bystander would never notice
it.

Some of this can be dealt with by having the machine print out a paper ballot
immediately after voting, and keeping those ballots. Then you're in fact using
the relative safety of paper ballot voting to double check the electronic
record.

~~~
ricardobeat
Of course the existing systems take these into consideration. There are a
dozen security measures in place here:

1) The software is exactly the same for the whole country (138m voters). All
software that runs on it is encrypted and signed, and the box is physically
sealed to detect intrusion.

2) You verify your vote before it's committed to disk on the voting machine.
See next point.

3) Every ballot box records votes to a flash card that is physically taken to
the nearest court house, where a judge is responsible for the equipment that
can decrypt, compile and transfer results to the federal system, using a
private network. At no point a ballot box is connected to any network or
external devices.

4) The equipment is programmed to only function during official voting times,
and only after running a test suite and integrity verification

5) At the end of the day each ballot box prints it own vote report, archived
locally, and keeps a copy of the results in it's internal flash memory

If you remove 10k votes from one machine, the numbers won't match: every voter
is registered, and you have to sign a small declaration if you don't vote -
the number of voters is always known beforehand. Voluntary elections like in
the US pose an interesting problem, maybe you could require pre-registration?

I think bypassing all the security measures undetected would be one hell of an
achievement.

------
maurits
Can someone explain me like a five year old (european) how it is that...

You put a man on the moon, flew the space shuttle, have a rover sending
holiday pics from mars, not to mention, your entire computer industrie....

But you can not make or agree a voting machine that actually works beyond
reasonable doubt?!

~~~
gte910h
The issue is that we have several voting machines that DO work.

They're just _not what certain states bought_. Were these bought for nefarious
reasons? Perhaps. Are they bad even if they were just purchased due to
incompetence/graft? Yes.

------
elbac
How to Rig an Election: The G.O.P. aims to paint the country red
[http://harpers.org/archive/2012/11/how-to-rig-an-
election/?s...](http://harpers.org/archive/2012/11/how-to-rig-an-
election/?single=1)

------
ambiguator
Seems like the obvious solution would be to close off the broken voting
machine.

~~~
MartinCron
I got _really_ into playing pinball a few years ago, and I got into the habit
of turning of a pinball machine whenever it wasn't working correctly (mis-
aligned flippers, whatever) so that other people didn't waste their quarters.
Yes, it was kind of obnoxious. Sorry.

Anyway, a similar mechanism to say "hey, this voting machine might be screwed
up, somebody check it out ASAP!" would make a lot of sense.

------
mkhpalm
Jeez, I thought HN people were sharper than this about modern technology. I'm
not a Romney supporter but these voting machines are basic single touch
interfaces with standard fat-finger algorithms. Lets have him pull back on the
camera and show the rest of the screen. Specifically, where his other finger
is at the time it selects Romney. His video is _highly_ suspect to me.

------
damncabbage
Potential voter purging in Pennsylvania:
[http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/watchdog-evidence-
un...](http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/watchdog-evidence-unlawful-
voter-purge-pennsylvania)

Oregon worker altering ballots in the GOP's favor:
[http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/06/oregon-election-
worker...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/06/oregon-election-worker-fired-
for-altering-ballots-to-republican-straight-ticket/)

At least one worker taking votes and putting them under the voting box:
<https://twitter.com/danicamckellar/status/265907196372594688>
<https://twitter.com/danicamckellar/status/26590774867435110>

... What the hell is going on over there?

------
spectrum
In the Netherlands they got rid of voting machines all together in 2008.

A group set out to ensure that the election process in the Netherlands would
become as fraud resistant as it was before the advent of paperless voting
computers. They demonstrated that the voting machines could be hacked. It wass
also a risk because of the small group involved in getting the results out of
these computers, with no real possibility to check if they are real (because
the source code is not open). Committing fraud would only have to involve a
few people.

On May 16, 2008 the Dutch government decided that elections in the Netherlands
will be held using paper ballots and red pencil only. A proposal to develop a
new generation of voting computers was rejected.

More info at <http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English>

------
Fargren
Who manufactures these machines? I'm curious whether or not they may be
vulnerable to Van Eck Phreaking[1]. Brazil discovered taht the machines they
were going to use were vulnerable to it.

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking>

------
shawn-butler
All this talk of electronic voting and one-way hash, etc confuses me. I know
of no aspect of the US Constitution or federal law nor the constitution of any
state in which I have resided which mandates a secret ballot. It might be a
tradition or something but it certainly isn't a civil right.

I'm sure there is probably mountains of state law on the issue but I would
have to wager any guarantee of secrecy would be just that, provided for on a
state-by-state basis. I would appreciate it if anybody could correct my
misunderstanding with citations.

I think its much more important for an election result to be trusted than for
it to be secret. Having both is optimal but not necessary for a valid result
under the law with which I am familiar.

------
ceejayoz
Everyone's been spoiled by iPads etc., I guess. Old touch screens used to do
this all the time. My Palm Pilot had a calibration app I'd have to run every
few days/weeks.

If he'd hit Mitt Romney, it probably wouldn't have selected Romney but the
blank region above his name.

~~~
hnriot
It's so funny to see that hardly anyone actually did anything more than just
watch the video. The same "oh it must have been miscalibrated" is repeated up
and down the comment page.

Let's hope whomever gets elected spends money on education so that people
start reading again and not just consuming the 5 second Reader's Digest
version.

~~~
AmVess
Uh, it's pretty clear that you didn't watch the video and didn't read the
article.

Don't troll. You are bad at it.

~~~
hnriot
Actually AmVess, that was my point, that most people didn't read the article,
they just jumped right to the miscalibration explanation that was already
eliminated by the guy making the video.

It's pretty clear that you didn't read (or understand) my comment. Don't
comment, you're bad at it. Dumbass!

~~~
ceejayoz
Miscalibration is supported by the video. We have to take the person's' word
on the other buttons, which they for some reason didn't bother to take a video
of.

Miscalibrations can also happen in these sorts of resistive touch screens that
fit the described behaviour.

------
shitlord
Is it too much to ask to just completely open-source these voting machine?
These machines decide the future of our country and affect the entire world.
The least we could do is allow everyone to verify for themselves whether the
machines are secure.

~~~
danielweber
Make sure you open-source the compiler, the firmware, the hardware
manufacturing process, the assembly, the drivers, the software that built the
compiler, and the software that built the compiler that built the compiler.

Or just operate under the assumption that some of the machines are compromised
and make sure you have ways of recognizing faults after-the-fact.

~~~
verbatim
You say this in a way that implies that it's not feasible to do such a thing.
I'm pretty sure that all of those components have been open sourced in various
projects, just maybe not all in the same system.

------
realrocker
Calibration!! Really?? Any software/hardware developer here worth his/her salt
would agree that can't be it. Let's see what could have happened: 1) The Y
axis of the screen was maladjusted 2) Touch Sensitivity of the screen was
reduced due to incorrect settings 3) Touch area had hair/dust/oil on it. But
if you read the voter's story it happened only for Obama's field. Don't they
have independent watchdogs looking after this thing in United States? If shit
like this went down in India, the Election Commission would have simply closed
the whole damn polling booth(for the day) and arrange separate polling on a
later day with extra scrutiny and security.

~~~
stevenwei
Disagree. I've worked with resistive/infrared touchscreens for many years and
this behavior is entirely consistent with touchscreen calibration errors,
especially with cheap/crappy touchscreens. See my other comments here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752605>

------
shirro
Why does an otherwise fairly extraordinary country (space missions, amazing
inventions, lots of creativity) manage to get basic stuff so completely wrong
(bad toilet plumbing, units of measurement, paper currency, health care, dodgy
voting). You need a proportional system. On paper. With hand counting by
volunteers overseen by party reps. Stop with all the private enterprise
technology stuff. Democracy is too precious to contract out to some lowest
bidder. The Australian Electoral Commission runs all our ballots here and I
have absolute confidence in them. Have a look at how other places run
elections.

------
tucosan
For those who are able to understand german and are not from the US, i highly
recommend the newest alternativlos podcast for perspective:

<http://alternativlos.org/28/>

------
tomflack
Lower house - <http://aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_HOR.htm#papers>

Senate -
[http://aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_Senate.htm#paper...](http://aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_Senate.htm#papers)

This is how we vote in Australia. I have real trouble seeing any system of
computerized voting or punch-card voting as superior having followed the
United States' experiences.

What do you guys think? We use preferential-voting, so it's a little different
but the idea is solid.

------
raverbashing
Obligatory reference: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ#t=18s>

I was surprised to see how similar it was.

------
bryanh
Looks like a touch screen that isn't calibrated correctly.

~~~
astrodust
It's 2012. You can buy touch screens that don't need constant "calibration".
These machines are using 1980s caliber technology when this was a constant
problem. The last touch screen I've worked with that had this issue was _CRT_
-based.

All these machines should do, presuming you _need_ machines at all, is print
out a receipt with the vote clearly indicated so that it can be deposited in a
traditional ballot box. Leaving the tabulation a "trade secret" is really not
a good idea.

------
nsxwolf
This seems like a fairly poor way to implement voter fraud. The screen gives
instant feedback. No Obama voter is going to say "Oh well, I guess I'll just
cast my vote for Romney then."

If you were reprogramming the machine, wouldn't you be better off changing it
to show Obama had been selected on the screen, but then print Romney onto the
paper ballot? There's a better chance a voter won't bother scrutinizing the
printout.

------
afterburner
This is serious, but I'm getting a lot of amusing out of news reporters asking
questions on Reddit, and have dozens of Reddit users pipe in with jokes.

------
stevenwei
In my opinion, this is very obviously a touchscreen calibration issue,
probably caused by the use of a crappy (read: cheap) touchscreen in the voting
machine.

A lot of people are dismissing the calibration issue because of the
"calibration test" the user described performing:

"Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I
first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to
actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I
deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping
very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's
button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all
active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the
Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama.
Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine."

However, this test does _does not actually demonstrate anything_. With
resistive and infrared touchscreens, which are commonly used in kiosks, it is
entirely possible to have some subsections of the screen work incorrectly,
while the rest works correctly. Therefore the fact that some buttons work fine
does not prove that the touchscreen is, in fact, correctly calibrated.

I've done a lot of work with kiosk touchscreens, and the first culprit I
thought of when seeing that video was that the touchscreen was miscalibrated.
The second culprit I thought of was that the touchscreen itself was faulty.

Resistive and infrared touchscreens are very prone to these types of problems,
and I've seen many scenarios similar to this across hundreds of different
touchscreens. (Often, just one corner of the screen will go out of wack, while
the rest of it works perfectly. I've seen this happen many times.)

The only way to know if the screen was actually correctly calibrated is to re-
calibrate the screen and see if the issue persists, and if it does, to replace
the touchscreen itself (as it could be faulty, not uncommon among cheap
touchscreens either). Neither of these steps was performed by the user,
therefore he has no way of concluding that the screen was correctly
calibrated. I suspect that once these tests are performed, it will be obvious
that the touchscreen is to blame.

There's a lot of outrage here at the idea of the voting machine altering
votes, but I think the following quote applies: _never attribute to malice
that which can be explained by incompetence._

The real outrage should be that these voting machines were deployed with such
crappy touchscreens built into them (probably to cut costs for the
manufacturer).

------
jrhorn424
I'm not taking a stand on whether this is some weird edge case bug or whether
it's a conspiracy, but I would like to point out that if it is fraud, it's an
incredibly inept attempt. Using a checkbox _for visual confirmation_ of a vote
means the fraud was easily detectable. It would have been much better to mark
the box for Obama but count the vote for Romney, if fraud is your goal.

------
FrojoS
I never understood why we would go for electronic voting. I couldn't care less
about the discussion here about touch screens or GUIs. Computer should have no
buisnes for important, secret elections!

In my opinion the risks and downsides of moving away from pen and paper
clearly outweigh any of the laughable advantages - unless of course you profit
from a system that is in-transparent and manipulatable.

------
flyinRyan
Why doesn't the US just buy the system Brazil uses? In Brazil 1) everyone must
vote and 2) they have strong reasons for wanting to make sure that no vote can
ever be tied directly to the person who cast it.

They have such a system in place for over a decade, it works perfectly. Just
buy that and use it instead of reinventing the wheel poorly.

------
Xcelerate
I'm not trying to be snarky: could someone explain to me why this is HN-worthy
(or at least worth 609 points)? In an election with thousands of voting
machines, the probability is high enough that at least a few of them will be
defective in some way; it should be expected as far as I can tell.

~~~
shawn-butler
Unsubstantiated rumors of vote tampering via technological means on election
night is the ultimate link-bait? Seems pretty clear why it is worth so many
points :)

If only the specifications of the hardware and source for the software for the
machine in question were available for us to analyze....

------
sukuriant
What show was it that discussed what would happen with a large number of very
smart engineers and voting? I recall a TV show back in the day that basically
said "We don't use electronic voting because it's too easy to game". I think
it was one of the episodes of Sliders.

------
readme
It looks like the touch screen might need to be calibrated. This used to
happen on a POS system I worked with.

I think the title is link bait. The voting machine isn't altering the vote.
It's just off kilter. Besides, it's not like the user didn't know what box was
being checked!

------
short_circut
It seems to me a way to mitigate this risk of part of the screen not working
is to randomize the order with which the candidates are displayed. The error
would presumably average itself out. Either way this is unacceptable.

------
Gabler
I would be more outraged if the video actually showed him tapping the other
candidates to prove that they worked correctly. He says that tapping the
others worked fine but there is no proof of this in the video.

~~~
LoneWolf
Exactly what I thought, I have been going through the comments and seems to be
something that most people don't think about, without video evidence to
support what the voter says I call it lying.

------
bane
"It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting." - Jumpers (1972)

------
dhughes
Canadian here but I'm curious wouldn't it make sense for voting machines to
have independent dual screens instead of a single screen where the possibility
of a calibration error could exist?

------
sakopov
Wouldn't it be a good idea to have some sort of automated remote monitoring
system which would randomly ping each machine for diagnostics data and
shutdown machines if any issues discovered?

~~~
TallGuyShort
If someone had enough access to tamper with the regions of the screen and
their linking to voting options, what makes you think a remote monitoring
system would be trivial?

------
melkisch
If you don't want to have your vote altered. You can go on
<https://poutsch.com> The cool thing is that the whole planet can vote there!

------
blisper
I asked for paper ballot this morning. Many volunteers are cheerful and
apathetic, for them its just another gig. Lost on them is the fact this is
something fundamental. Scary !!

------
onli
What do you expect? Opaque source-code, machines produced by companies linked
to the Republicans, and all that in a failing state. Stuff like that was
obviously going to happen.

------
scotty79
Why not this
[http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_frau...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud.html)
?

------
johncoltrane
What _exactly_ are supposed to be the benefits of electronic voting machines
over sliping a piece of paper in an enveloppe and putting it in an urn?

------
mcantelon
This exact scenario also happened on video in 2008:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MHwNZkNFlI>

------
ne0codex
This seriously pisses me the fuck off. Just how the hell do we not have the
technology yet for accurate touch-screen technology in voting machines?

------
jordanthoms
Simpsons did it... <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ>

------
satori99
The US uses a federal agency to collect income taxes, so why won't it do the
obvious thing and create one to run federal elections?

~~~
trhtrsh
US does not have federal elections. US has state elections for Senate,
Congress, and the Electoral College.

------
wallacrw
Is it real, and Republicans are fraudsters? Or is it a fake, and Democrats are
fraudsters? Or is a Republican plant of a fake so that I believe I hate
Democrats?!? Or maybe even Democrats planted an obvious fake, to make me think
Republicans posted the fake, so that I'd know it's fake and end up
disrespecting Republicans for the poor attempt at influencing me?!?!?!

Too confusing. I'm staying home.

------
tcohen
confirmed by NBC <http://on.msnbc.com/TIyxAl>

------
jjp9999
This is nothing. I was texting on my phone and it changed "Romny" to "Ronny."

Microsoft must be behind it.

------
donerKebab
Why does this matter? The majority of votes is not the decider in this
'democracy'.

------
armored_mammal
Is there any evidence that what it records actually matches the screen anyway?

~~~
danielweber
There is a user-visible printed receipt that is not shown in the video.

------
csmatt
A bit off-topic, but how do recounts work with electronic voting machines?

~~~
kbutler
It varies.

Some systems have a "recount" button that returns the same result as before.
Others have an actual paper trail that can be recounted by hand.

------
charlieok
Much worse would be altering your vote without showing you that it did so

------
doctorpangloss
A $300 iPad does a better job than this $3,500 voting machine.

------
gte910h
I hope this is a hoax.

~~~
georgemcbay
I hope it is a hoax or a miscalculation issue. If it is actual fraud, I hope
the people behind it are found, tried and if convicted punished to a degree
warranted by what this would be -- treason.

~~~
gte910h
While I emotionally agree with you, I think overcharging is a bane on the
existence of the legal system.

------
awayand
voting cannot be computerized ever without risk of manipulation. voting will
always have to be on paper in the interest of democracy.

------
jcmoscon
LOL probably just needs to touch a little bit lower on the screen. If you're
not smart enough to figure that out, you should NOT be allowed to vote.

------
aioprisan
that's nonsense, it was just a screen screwup and there's a paper trail on
those machines, thank god.

------
pebb
He who casts a vote decides nothing. He who counts the votes decides
everything

------
ommunist
Oh, how sad the vigilante cannot film the pesky RAM-inhabiting daemon, that
summate counting and distributes electronic votes according to the AdSense
spending of every candidate. Even the iPhone is not capable of doing that
surveillance.

------
jackalope
Obviously staged, obviously edited, obviously fake.

~~~
binaryorganic
I'll give you obviously edited, but why so sure about the other two?

~~~
bradmccarty
I can't even give obviously edited. Ever used a lower-end Android phone? I
have, and this looks like a video directly from one. Jittery, frame skipping
mess.

Edit: Also, it's been verified and taken offline.
[http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/06/machine-turns-vote-for-
obama-...](http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/06/machine-turns-vote-for-obama-into-
one-for-romney/)

~~~
binaryorganic
Obviously edited b/c of the distinct scene cut between the candidate selection
that takes up the first half of the video, and the cast vote button which
takes up the second half.

All the commenter was saying was that whoever shot the video didn't share it
before first splicing two different shots together.

~~~
MichaelApproved
_"All the commenter was saying was that whoever shot the video didn't share it
before first splicing two different shots together."_

That's not all the commenter was saying. OP was claiming the original video
was staged and fake. He was accusing the Redditor if deception.

