Centerfield

Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting

Florida won't use its touch-screen voting machines in 2008. It's going to be selling them. This article bugs me because it's got a quote from everybody who should have a quote - except, of course, somebody who might have a window into the facts, like a computer scientist specializing in the area. There are plenty who happily and regularly give explanatory quotes to the media. That particular laziness after 2000 gave us a terrible threat to our democracy.

Since the Times could'n't be bothered to provide a quote, here's my response to one grumbling election supervisor, one Mr. Browning:

“If you were to do a very thorough study of problems with touch screens, you would probably find that 99.9 percent of them would be traced back to human error.”

Well, in fact, we have no idea how many problems these machines have, since there's no adequate provision in the design for checking how many problems we have. But he is, after all, probably right - humans make plenty of mistakes in everything, including writing software for these machines. But we have no way of telling if they've been maliciously hacked atall; I'd hardly term that human error.

Jubilant slashdot thread here

Here are two good quotes from the slashdot thread. The first one summarizes what's up pretty well:

by Kadin2048 (468275): I think we should rigorously enforce some sort of minimum standard of quality for elections. Above and beyond that, sure, states can choose what brand and type of machines they want. But we all have an interest in making sure that elections are fair, unbiased, and transparent. Auditless electronic voting systems prohibit that by design, and for that reason they ought to be illegal. Leave them for supermarket taste-tests where they belong.

by ILuvRamen (1026668): I think we should buy one for each Slashdot 10th anniversary party and smash them.