
Texans say voting machines changing straight-ticket choices - threatofrain
https://apnews.com/a8825810d10441f2ad828e95d6851d55
======
threatofrain
I thought particularly interesting was the description of the UX:

> In a statement to supporters Friday, Cruz cited “multiple reports” of race
> selections changing and added “once you select the Republican party ticket,
> please be patient and do not select ‘next’ until the ballot has populated
> all of the selections.”

It reminds me of an era of "Please don't press 'Buy' twice or your credit card
could be charged again."

~~~
ASalazarMX
Understandable but hardly justifiable when voting machines first were
implemented, but the provider has had many years to improve their product.
That they don't suggests they are paid regardless of quality, or it is working
as intended.

~~~
usefulcat
I think you may be overestimating how often these machines get updated. I
don't know about the internals, but as a long time TX resident I can say that
the machines I saw last time I voted (2016) didn't look much if any different
than the machines I saw at least 10 years ago, and probably longer. Also,
there's got to be some amount of overhead related to certification and
training for each new design, so the state has plenty of incentive to keep
using the same machines.

------
cesarb
> “The Hart eSlate machines are not malfunctioning, the problems being
> reported are a result of user error — usually voters hitting a button or
> using the selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering,”

That reminds me of the Therac-25: "They determined that data entry speed
during editing was the key factor in producing the error condition: If the
prescription data was edited at a fast pace (as is natural for someone who has
repeated the procedure a large number of times), the overdose occurred."
([http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf](http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf))

~~~
Jtsummers
I was going to say something similar. In the Therac case, at least part of the
fault fell with the operators who _should_ have known what to look for (if
things had been well documented and they'd been trained). But this is a rare
event, every year (at most) or every 2 or 4 years, for most voters. You expect
computers to work these days and to be responsive so the idea that _users_ are
at fault for crappy UI/UX is absurd. If something seems to be working then the
user in this case has no reason to doubt it because they haven't used these
systems with sufficient frequency to be aware of its poor quality and how to
respond to it.

~~~
ASalazarMX
> In the Therac case, at least part of the fault fell with the operators who
> should have known what to look for (if things had been well documented and
> they'd been trained).

This. Even a humble accountant usually reverses entry errors immediately, yet
this critical input was harder to double check.

~~~
inlined
As I recall correctly, when the technician typed too quickly a subsystem
crashed. There was no training for that and no obvious feedback mechanism.

------
int_19h
We need a federal law that outright bans voting machines for all federal
elections that Congress has control over (it'll get rid of them entirely in
practice, because no-one will want to waste time and money by maintaining
parallel systems).

That will solve all the immediate issues. Think of it as the equivalent of
taking down a compromised server.

Then, companies that make those things can go back to the drawing table,
actually think about what they're making this time, and try to convince us all
that they did it right. It'll take a lot of convincing, and that's exactly how
it should be. For starters, I'd want to hear about the exact problem being
solved.

What would it take to make this happen? It feels like something that would
carry more weight if the initial push came from the IT industry. People will
listen better to something like, "I'm a software engineer with 20 years of
experience, and in my educated opinion, electronic voting should be banned."

~~~
elihu
Machines are useful for accessibility. Rather than a total ban on voting
machines, I'd rather see a ban on machines that don't produce a paper ballot
that can be manually counted, and no results should be considered official
until the physical ballots are hand-counted. (Electronic counts are fine to
satisfy the desire for instant results.)

That wouldn't necessarily fix this particular issue (machines with bad UI
selecting the wrong candidates), but at least it's easy for a voter to
determine if something went wrong if the paper ballot is marked incorrectly.

~~~
giarc
In Canada we vote on paper (paper and pencil) and get instant results. There's
no reason for any computers to be involved.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Canada has 1/2 the population of California alone.

~~~
kilotaras
How is that even remotely relevant? Number of polling places and effort scales
linearly with population size.

~~~
acranox
But it’s not always equal.
[http://amp.kansas.com/news/business/article220286260.html](http://amp.kansas.com/news/business/article220286260.html)

------
pavel_lishin
> _“The Hart eSlate machines are not malfunctioning, the problems being
> reported are a result of user error — usually voters hitting a button or
> using the selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering,” said Sam
> Taylor, spokesman for the office of Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, who
> was appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott._

Yes, it's those stupid users' fault, of course.

~~~
glitcher
Right, because the spokesman for a state government office knows best when it
comes to software UX design. Oh boy.

~~~
afarrell
I’m not someone who believes that you should be able to pitch manure, plan an
invasion, and conn a ship. But someone can have standards for UX design
without knowing about how to execute any of it. An employee of a procurement
department certainly should be as part of their core competency. A
spokesperson for a government procurement department should be able to
communicate that if it is something the department values

~~~
wavefunction
Forgive me if I prematurely discount the UX opinions of a Gregg Abbott
political appointee explaining that a laughably amateur user experience is the
fault of the voters of the opposing party.

~~~
afarrell
Oh we don't disagree on that. I'm saying that this appointee should be better
at UX evaluation, not that we should take their opinion as worth anything.

------
naikrovek
One thing I've always wondered is why electronic voting machines aren't code
reviewed AT LEAST as much as slot machines.

Electronic gambling devices are intensely code reviewed. It's the law. Why not
electronic voting machines?

That said, paper ballots and hand counting are the answer for secure and
accurate vote counts.

~~~
russdill
Because there is no money in electronic voting machines, at least not when
compared to gambling machines.

If similar review and certification was required, states would throw their
hands up at the cost and just opt for optically scanned paper ballots.

~~~
ldng
Oh dear and me wrongfully thinking there was a huge amount of money at stake!

------
mrweasel
Why is the US so set on voting machine to begin with? They clearly aren't
secure, and apparently they are't as user-friendly as the paper ballots
they're replacing?

A few months ago it was announced that Denmark is dropping all plans for
electronic voting in the foreseeable future. There a to many issues with the
voting machines and holding a paper ballot election is neither expensive nor
complicated.

~~~
paulddraper
Efficency/cost, speed of results, no 2000 hanging chad nonsense.

I still think they should be paper, but those are the reasons.

~~~
JorgeGT
There's no contradiction between paper ballots and speed. In my country we all
vote with paper ballots, then at the closing of the polling stations the
members of each voting table punch the results of their urn into a laptop
which connects to the electoral authority. In 3-4h max the elections results
are out.

For security however, after punching the numbers into the laptop, ballots are
re-sealed into the urn and physically sent to the electoral authority, where
in the following days public officers count them manually again. There has
never been any meaningful deviation detected to date.

This way, you have the security of paper ballots (they are on sight of party
volunteers at all times) with the speed of electronic vote aggregation.

~~~
ASalazarMX
Are you Mexican? Our system is the same, but a critical factor helps it. Every
citizen has a voting credential, and every booth has a list of voters. You
can't vote without your id, and while you can vote in secret, you can only
vote in your designated booth.

This gives the system its agility. Our recent presidential election had a
reliable statistical advance (PREP) at 23:00 the same day, and the next day
every single vote of every remote booth was fully accounted, and the result
confirmed the PREP.

The Mexican electoral system is surprisingly effective, yet we have the same
core problem of democracy: we need better candidates and less gullible voters
:/

~~~
JorgeGT
Close, Spaniard! But it works here as you describe (even to the last sentence,
unfortunately!).

~~~
ASalazarMX
Not even the Greeks have managed to solve that problem. And they invented
democracy!

------
olliej
If the process for confirming your vote can change your vote the machine is
fundamentally broken and should be removed from service.

The end.

The state should also be refunded the full cost of a redo in every district.

~~~
tempestn
Agreed except that it's the individual counties that each choose and purchase
their own equipment, which itself sounds like a terrible idea.

~~~
jobigoud
I think he means the voting machine vendors should refund the state/county
that purchased the malfunctioning equipment.

~~~
tempestn
Yeah, I was just pointing out that it would be counties buying the equipment,
rather than the state.

------
influxed
>“The Hart eSlate machines are not malfunctioning, the problems being reported
are a result of user error — usually voters hitting a button or using the
selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering,”

This is a problem with the machine and the people who made it, not the people
using it. "User error" is usually an poor excuse for lazy and/or bad design.

~~~
tvanantwerp
Reminds me of the time I worked the polls in 2004 in NC, which was (maybe
still is) using electronic touchscreen voting. I clearly remember an elderly
woman with very poor fine motor control. Her hand was shaking terribly. I
watched her hit the "next" button and, due to the shaking, press it multiple
times and skip most of the ballot.

I asked her if she wanted my help to go back and finish her ballot. She
declined, saying she'd managed the vote for President and that was all she
really cared about.

~~~
greglindahl
... and that's probably very visible as "undervotes" in the counts.

Looks like NC is going to switch machines soon:

[https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-
government/articl...](https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-
government/article215763215.html)

------
clarkevans
_The Texas Hart eSlate machines do not provide receipts or other forms of
paper trail_

So, they fail Voter Verified Paper Trail
([https://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#year/2018/state/48](https://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#year/2018/state/48)).
In this case, it doesn't matter what ever you see on the final page, what is
stored in the computer can't be audited. It's been 15 years since
technologists have been stating that we need a voter verified paper trail.

------
CivBase
Has anyone here worked on developing a voting machine?

Why is this such a complicated problem? There doesn't seem to be any many
issues to consider when designing the interface, logic, and storage for one of
these machines. I feel like many programmers could develop something like this
in a matter of hours.

I can imagine some issues if you try to introduce networking, but I don't see
any reason why networking should be necessary. Just keep it simple.

Many people advocate for paper and pencil because of it's simplicity, but it
should be obvious why that is potentially a much more complicated solution. It
relies on humans to record and later read a large amount of information
delivered in small chunks. Humans are terrible at that! Getting a machine to
read data from the printed page hardly seems any more trivial. That's not even
to mention the potential issues that arise from managing the large amount of
physical voting cards.

If anyone _has_ worked on one of these machines, I'd be very interested to
hear their thoughts on the matter.

~~~
saidajigumi
> _Why is this such a complicated problem?_

Because a software/hardware solution is inherently inscrutable to the
overwhelming majority of the population. It's amenable to hacking and _not_
amenable to auditing.

The problem is NOT "build a zero-stakes voting web app", it's more like "build
a voting machine which ensures the voter can audit their vote and election
auditors can audit election tallies with full transparency, and with a threat
model of people trying to hack the voting machines to control election
results". Getting better than pencil, scannable paper ballots, and auditors
from all (political) parties involved in that election to cover vote counting
/ recounts –– that's the really, really hard part.

~~~
CivBase
Are you saying it's a public consciousness thing, then?

When I vote, it is my understanding that when I stuff my paper ballot into the
box (or sometimes even just hand it over to someone), I am forced to trust the
staff to account for my vote. Personally, I don't feel like I'm any more
protected against bad actors by using pencil-and-paper.

The only truly-auditable solution I can think of is to have everyone make
their vote public, but that is obviously not a reasonable solution.

~~~
henrikschroder
There are eyes on your ballot and the voting urn, and there may be observers
from different political parties present at your polling location, also
keeping eyes on the ballots and the urns.

At your polling place, you count the number of ballots going into each urn,
and you count the number of ballots coming out of each urn when voting is
over. You do a preliminary counting of the ballots, and then they get put back
into the urns, that are then sealed, and sent off to some central place for a
second counting.

So at every step there are multiple eyes on all pieces, and there are many
points where you can discover discrepancies that might indicate cheating. And
you can have as many observers as you like at any part of the process, from
opposing political parties. So you use their distrust of each other to create
trust in the process.

~~~
philwelch
Voting systems are like banks or computer systems: it's not humanly possible
to invent one that is safe from fraud, malfeasance, or even human error.
Except unlike banks and computer systems, voting systems are by their very
nature designed and operated by the very people who would benefit from
manipulating them.

Political distrust only goes so far, because winning elections tends to give
you more control over the government, which in turn allows you to manipulate
elections so that you continue to win them. On the local level, the opposition
party often diminishes to the point where not only do they lack the manpower
and organization to effectively even contest elections, but the national party
effectively abandons the area entirely.

~~~
henrikschroder
> Political distrust only goes so far, because winning elections tends to give
> you more control over the government, which in turn allows you to manipulate
> elections

In banana republics, sure, in civilized countries, not so much.

> On the local level, the opposition party

Again, I'm sorry the US has the incredibly shitty first-past-the-post election
shit, because that is the cause of the inevitable two-party system shit.

If the US had a better representative democracy, this wouldn't be a problem.

However, even with the situation you describe, it should be possible to guess
which districts will be the closest in margin, and make sure you put more eyes
on those districts, in favor of districts that are sure to go either way.
That's good enough to secure the election result.

~~~
philwelch
> Again, I'm sorry the US has the incredibly shitty first-past-the-post
> election shit, because that is the cause of the inevitable two-party system
> shit.

It's not just the US; it's every English-speaking country except New Zealand.
Proportional representation doesn't really stop governments from manipulating
their elections either--for example, the Russian Duma has proportional
representation.

------
rhacker
I like how flippantly disregarding the authorities are about this. Oh just
make sure to sloooow down folks! No mention if the people complaining were
allowed to change their votes.

YET someone that is barred from voting, someone that did jail time typically,
is thrown in the fucking slammer for one vote cast (and they typically didn't
even know they were not allowed to).

~~~
tssva
The machines in question display all of your selections on a separate screen
for the voter to review and approve before the ballot is cast. Since the
voters noticed a change they either noticed it before getting to this screen
or on this screen. Either way they had an opportunity to go back and change
their vote before the ballot was cast.

------
notacoward
If it's user error, there should be reports of votes being switched both ways.
Why do I get the feeling that's not actually the case? I can smell a pile of
BS that big all the way from Massachusetts.

~~~
bargl
I can think of a few reasonable explanations. The first being that it probably
defaults to whoever is at the top of the ballot. I.E. The incumbent and in
this case a Republican.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

~~~
notacoward
It's not clear from the story that defaults are relevant. Votes are made and
then changed, not left blank

~~~
jshevek
I agree that this is not 'user error'. I would say its a 'poorly made
interface', but bargl is right. Your initial claim was:

>If it's user error, there should be reports of votes being switched both
ways.

Bargl gave a counter-example, showing that a lack of bi-directional changes
doesn't place such constraints on the possible nature of the problem.

> I can think of a few reasonable explanations. The first being that it
> probably defaults to whoever is at the top of the ballot. I.E. The incumbent
> and in this case a Republican. "Never attribute to malice that which is
> adequately explained by stupidity."

He wasn't claiming that the defaults must be relevant, only that they could be
relevant.

------
dreamdu5t
What can I do to prevent my district from using electronic voting machines?

With paper ballots, I know that there's no way my selection was changed before
it was given to the poll worker (who is subject to public observation). With
voting machines, I have no idea what the poll worker received.

~~~
gameswithgo
experts have been advising governments to not use electronic voting machines
unless they can print out a paper receipt since ~1997 and nobody has listened
so good luck.

~~~
bigpicture
I vote in Chicago, and our electronic voting machines print a paper receipt.
The process is as follows: 1) Write your name and address on a piece of paper.
2) Hand it to the worker, who looks you up on the computer. 3) The worker
writes your ward/precinct on the piece of paper and asks you to confirm and
sign. 4) The ballot is loaded onto a smart card and given to you. 5) You
choose any open voting machine and insert the smart card. 6) The voting
machine presents your ballot and you press a button to confirm it is the
correct one. 7) You do your voting. 8) The voting machine shows you all of
your votes, screen by screen and you confirm them. 9) The voting machine
prints your votes, page by page on a roll of paper (behind clear plastic) and
you confirm them. 10) The voting machine asks if you are really, really sure
and you confirm. 11) The smart card pops out of the machine and you drop it in
a box on the way out.

If you do early voting, you can only vote electronically. If you vote on
election day, you can choose a paper ballot if you wish. Early voting is
electronic only because you can vote anywhere in the city (if you work
downtown you can do so on your lunch break no matter where in the city you
live) and there are dozens of different ballots because we vote on things at
the neighborhood level in addition to state and national candidates. Having
paper ballots would be quite challenging.

~~~
britch
This really seems like the ideal. I don't understand places that don't use
machines like this, it' not like Chicago/Illinois are rolling in money.

------
randcraw
Does the machine flip the user's straight-ticket UNIFORMLY across the possible
parties? Or does it seem to favor one party over all the others?

If this is really user error, the simplest solution for this is for half the
machines to place the republican straight ticket first on the wheel, and on
the other half, to place the democrat straight ticket first.

But somehow I think that level of fair-mindedness will be unlikely. (BTW, I
lived in TX for a bit, so my jaundice was fairly earned.)

~~~
brigade
For these machines, apparently incumbents are selected by default. Which in
Texas are predominantly republican of course.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Smart and incredibly unethnical sales strategy assuming those incumbents have
some say in who gets that contract.

------
thecosas
Not exactly a dark pattern because it's not intentional... but this is a
product failure, not user error.

Shouldn't allow selections until they've all loaded.

~~~
greglindahl
What does "intentional" mean when this equipment is used over and over and the
problem never gets fixed?

------
MiddleEndian
Voting machines are inherently wrong because any bugs are unacceptable,
especially in this case where "performance" is irrelevant. Paper and pen(cil)
is the way to go. Draw a line, that's it. No fuckery.

~~~
greglindahl
Isn't it better to measure every device, including paper and pencil, to see
what sorts of errors you get with each?

~~~
MiddleEndian
In theory, maybe. In practice, how do we do that? There have been zero
successful investigations as a result of "flaky" voting machines in America to
my knowledge.

And what are the incentives for using voting machines? They are harder to
verify than people from multiple parties counting lines drawn on a sheet of
paper. They are susceptible to conflicts of interest, general incompetence,
and security risks.

~~~
sturgill
Paper ballots aren’t immune to issues. Like the Al Franken election and
ballots in the trunk; hanging chads in Florida; etc. I don’t know what the
answer is here. I do not trust electronic voting machines. Paper isn’t immune
to issues. Personally I’d love to see a dual system: votes are recorded
electronically with a paper receipt.

~~~
MiddleEndian
Re: hanging chads

This is a problem with overtechnical solutions already. Random mechanical
points of failure. Pencil drawing a line is unambiguous.

Re: ballots in a trunk

This was an auditing/ procedural issue.

Re: receipts

Why not just turn in the receipts and count them. Why have a black box do the
counting? If a machine says candidate A had a thousand forty votes and B had a
thousand thirty, what are you going to do? How do you know if your receipt
lied? If people keep their receipts, you no longer have anonymous voting. And
what are you going to do, track down every voter? If those running the
election keep the receipts, they should just count them manually.

~~~
coliveira
The receipt is not to be taken by the voter. The voter will check that the
receipt is correct and it will be deposited into the voting urn. Then, manual
counting may be done for all precincts or by sampling.

~~~
greglindahl
Right. And in the paper-plus-optical-scan system, the receipt is the thing the
voter directly marked. No machine between voter and ballot, no different thing
to check.

~~~
MiddleEndian
The counting is still not trustworthy if performed by a machine.

------
SeanBoocock
I live in Austin and have been voting with these machines for the last 8
years, including earlier this week.

The UI for the ballot is a series of rectangular tiles separated into two
columns on a series of pages. Each tile represents a given race or
proposition, with a title header, a description field, and then the various
options to vote for stacked vertically as a collection of { radio button,
option title }.

In order to navigate between pages, there are two digital "arrow" buttons for
"Next" and "Back". To navigate within a page, and then within a tile, there is
a clicky scroll wheel (rotation quantized in something on the order of 30
degree increments). To make a selection there is a separate button digital
button "Enter".

The way the straight party selection is presented is as the first tile on the
first page of partisan ballot options. Selecting straight party isn't a
separate option on the underlying ballot; rather it is UI layer feature that
fills in all of the partisan election options with the party of choice as if
you had individually selected all of them.

I've never experienced the phenomenon described in the article, but I can
imagine how it might happen. There is visible latency in interactions
(selecting an option, moving between options/pages) and I could imagine
someone selecting the straight party choice, pressing "Enter", not seeing an
immediate result and pressing Enter again while rotating the wheel, and then
being confused when they see the first partisan election race not reflecting
their vote because they inadvertently made another selection on that race.

This seems like an easy thing to address and something that could/should have
come up in UX usability testing. If anything should go through rigorous
accessibility and usability testing, it should be voting processes (and that
hold for whether elections are mediated by machines, paper ballots, or some
other method).

~~~
Izkata
Based on the "wait for all candidates to have loaded" description, I had a
thought that no one else seems to have had yet, and you may be able to confirm
it as a possibility: Do the names ever shift around?

The thought is, lets say there's 3 candidates, Alex, Becky, and Carl, and
they're supposed to show in that order. But due to the slow loading time, you
first see Becky and Carl, then Alex loads in a moment later and the other two
shift down.

Since you've described the straight party selection as a separate
button/option, the thought I had was, what if picking that is supposed to
choose Becky, so Option 2. But if you hit it too soon, you've selected Becky
as Option 1. And then Alex loads in and Becky becomes Option 2, but the vote
didn't shift - it's still on Option 1.

Does that sound like a possibility, with your experience with these machines?

------
delecti
I'm strongly opposed to voting machines, but if we're going to be stuck with
them, enabling "straight ticket" as an easy selection shouldn't be an option.
I even vote "straight ticket", so I understand why a person might, but we
should aspire to it not being necessary, and shouldn't enable it.

I'd even go as far as to say that it would make sense to not even list the
party on ballots. If the only information a person has about a candidate is
their name and the (D) or (R) next to it, they might just not be informed
about that particular race. I'm less sure of that opinion though, and wouldn't
defend it as ardently.

~~~
jshevek
I would agree that democracy works better the more informed the voters are,
however the very idea of taking steps to discourage 'voting while ignorant' is
highly controversial in the US. We have a history of disenfranchising voters
which is at the back of most people minds when the topic comes up.

~~~
delecti
If someone would choose to not vote in a particular race on their ballot
because they didn't know which candidate was the (D) and which was the (R)
that's hardly disenfranchisement.

But it's also not the main point I was trying to argue.

------
clircle
I do and will always advise my friends and family to vote by mail in ballot
(if allowed).

~~~
craftyguy
In Oregon, the entire state votes by mail in ballots, which we receive like 2
weeks ahead of election day. This means I can vote when I am not at work, and
don't have to miss work to do so. It's amazing, more states should implement
this.

~~~
cvwright
I agree, it's very convenient. Especially because you can sit and read through
the voter's pamphlet as you make your selections.

On the other hand, voting by mail opens up _huge_ opportunities for coercion
or vote buying/selling.

~~~
craftyguy
> On the other hand, voting by mail opens up huge opportunities for coercion
> or vote buying/selling.

Not any more than any current systems do. You have to sign the ballot, and if
the signature does not match what you submitted in your voter registration
thing, they kick it back to you.

Unless you are insinuating that the USPS mail folks could collect them all and
send in forgeries?

~~~
sp332
You don't sign the ballot. You sign a paper that gets sent along with the
ballot. If things are done properly, the person checking your signature
doesn't see your vote and the person counting your vote won't see your
signature.

~~~
craftyguy
Yea I wasn't totally accurate in my response. The point is, voter fraud by
mail requires accurately forging a LOT of signatures.

Alternatively, the state can pay for the return stamp, but will likely have to
pass some tax measure to fund it (in Oregon, state budget _must_ be balanced),
so in the end voters would still be buying the stamp. This is less efficient
since now there would be stamps bought that folks have no intention of using
since they drop them off.

~~~
henrikschroder
No need to forge signatures, you just order all your kids and grandkids to
vote like you say, or they will be ostracized by the rest of the family.

Or you order all your employees to vote like you say, or they will be fired.
If they don't snap a pic of a ballot filled out to your liking, out the door
they go.

Or you just buy the votes of anyone. $50 for a pic of a "correctly" filled out
ballot. That scales pretty nicely.

~~~
craftyguy
I see your point, but don't agree that it 'scales pretty nicely' since it
would rely on all participants keeping quiet about it, which definitely
prevents it from scaling at all since you won't be able to openly advertise
you are doing this without drawing fire from election officials.

------
mrfusion
I’ve always wanted a button to vote a straight anti-incumbent ticket.

Or at least I think they should display incumbent status on the ballot. That
seems more important than party to me.

------
mikeash
Essentially every computer expert says that using computers for voting is a
really bad idea. We do it anyway. Is there any other area where we do
something like this?

~~~
paulhebert
Off the top of my head, people regularly ignore environmental scientists on
environmental policy and doctors on personal health habits.

------
poulsbohemian
Voting by mail, as we have in Washington and Oregon, makes it so easy to vote.
And, now we don't even need a stamp on our ballots. I don't know that any
system is perfect, but one really has no excuse to not vote and to vote
accurately when they have plenty of time and can do it from the comfort of
their home.

~~~
greiskul
Voting by mail is an abomination that goes entirely against the idea of a
secret ballot, allowing voter coercion, and sometimes even voting fraud. There
is a reason most democracies don't do it.

~~~
poulsbohemian
We have loads of disenfranchised people, deliberately put in that spot by
manipulative voter ID policies, along with report after report about security
flaws in voting machines. Tell me again what’s wrong with voting by mail?

------
fromthestart
This is so ridiculous. What kind of ancient hardware are these garbage
machines running that they have race conditions with such large time windows?

How is it possible that in 2018 our electronic voting systems are so broken?
Is it really so difficult to build a basic UI and tally choices securely?

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rrix2
"I have to admit it's behaving rather erratically"

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/comic/page/42](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/comic/page/42)
(November 2005)

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pinwheel
It seems the system could be configured to default to 'no selection' rather
than default to one choice or another. Then the 'page rendering' issue can be
absolved of artificial influence perceived or otherwise.

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rgejman
This is a forum populated with thousands of smart and talented engineers all
discussing the absurdity of US voting systems and suggesting great fixes.
There is clearly a problem to be solved here—and it might even be lucrative to
solve it. Seems like a reasonable idea for a startup company: making cheap,
audit-able polling devices that can be sold to any county in the country and
any country in the world. Someone here should take a stab at it.

~~~
jacques_chester
Or, as engineers, we can propose an existing solution that is trustworthy and
well-proved: pen and paper.

It has proved its reliability in thousands of elections. It is cheap,
universally-understood and basically impossible to subvert to a meaningful
level of impact. It is understood by everyone who can vote.

Democracy doesn't need us to show off how clever and creative we are. It needs
boring, simple, reliable mechanisms.

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samat
They are basically admitting it’s faulty when telling ‘it’s users mistake and
there are lots of users like this’.

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newnewpdro
When your implementation is indefensible, always blame the user.

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csel
“The Hart eSlate machines are not malfunctioning, the problems being reported
are a result of user error — usually voters hitting a button or using the
selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering"

More like a page loading issue. Probably need to look at optimizing the page
or display a simple big "LOADING..." in the middle of the screen while all
fields and field values are being loaded. Also disable the actual page (all
submit or selection buttons) while page is being loaded.

Definitely not user error. Different locations have different internet
connection speed that will effect page loading.

~~~
bostik
> _Different locations have different internet connection speed that will
> effect page loading._

Wait, what?

Are you claiming that these insecure, unusable, unfit-for-purpose excuses for
a POS machines are also INTERNET-CONNECTED?

(For the record: if the page render after an action takes more than 100ms
under _any_ circumstances, the system is by definition broken. That's the
lowest of the Nielsen thresholds.)

