"Can You Count on Voting Machines?

[grandpa]

The New York Times Magazine - Features - Columns - Style - The New York Times

[Voting machines] fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report that their choices 'flip' from one candidate to another before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes simply vanish. (In the 80-person town of Waldenburg, Ark., touch-screen machines tallied zero votes for one mayoral candidate in 2006—even though he's pretty sure he voted for himself.) Most famously, in the November 2006 Congressional election in Sarasota, Fla., touch-screen machines recorded an 18,000-person 'undervote' for a race decided by fewer than 400 votes.

So what do you think? Can you?

Grandpa h.

[HelioPrime]

Hand ballots can still be miscounted along the lines. Somewhere in the chain people have the power to do so.

Machines are just a more cost effective way of voting and equally open to miscounts.

[Nono]

Scrutinizing the process of counting hand ballots is much easier by virtue of their technical simplicity. Anyone trying to fiddle the election has to look elsewhere.

It beats me why Americans have allowed the past two presidential elections to be stolen. I would have hoped they attached more value to democracy.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Nono It beats me why Americans have allowed the past two presidential elections to be stolen. I would have hoped they attached more value to democracy.

In a real enough way, our election system has been a weapon of mass
destruction.

Grandpa h.