From Techdirt:
At what point do we wake up from this e-voting story nightmare and have someone reassure us it was only a dream? Every day, there’s yet another story about how badly screwed up these machines are. Today, we’ve got atreat, as it’s not actually about Diebold, but their competitor, Sequoia Voting Systems. It turns out that on the back of some of their machines used in California, there’s a little yellow button. If you push it, you can vote multiple times by switching themachine to “manual” mode. In true geek fashion, Sequoia has responded with (I kid you not) their own version of “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature!” They claim it’s “deliberate back-up feature to prevent the Edge from having a single point of failure.” Hey,preventing single points of failure are great, but when they introduce a totally different point of failure, that’s not so good. But, according to the company, this is the type of “flexibility” they’ve always provided. I didn’t realize that “flexibility” was something desired in an e-voting system. Generally, you’d think people would prefer them to be pretty rigid, but to work right — and not allow multiple votes. Sequoia claims that use of this feature emits a loud beeping noise, and they’ll train poll workers to listen for that — but that doesn’t seem like the most reliable methods. We’ve heard so many stories of confused and technology illiterate voting officials that it’s hard to believe they’ll remember this or know what to do if it happens. The company says it will address the issue after next week’s election — but that any district using them can choose to simply turn off this “feature.” So, if you’re voting in California and you have an AVC Edge e-voting machine from Sequoia, and you have a bit of moral flexibility, apparently you can support your favorite candidate just that much more.
Early voting in five states showed that voters’ choice are being flipped to the opposite candidate on all four major e-voting machines — Diebold TSx, Sequoia Edge, ES&S iVotronic, and Hart InterCivic eSlate.
Three counties in Texas report vote-flipping on the Diebold and ES&S machines. Three counties in Florida report vote-flipping on the ES&S and Sequoia machines. One county in Illinois, on the Sequioa Edge, and one county in Arkansas, on the ES&S iVotronic. In some cases, when the voter selects one candidate, the machine shows an opponent is selected instead. more at VoteTrustUSA
Scary eh? Hours mulling over voter information, research so I can make the right decision . .. and emmm who knows if it will count my choice right? I do not know if my polling place has one of these machines – in hours I will know.
Voter beware – VOTE VOTE VOTE and hope it counts it the right way. Now if I could only find the little yellow button 🙂
(serious note: I really would never cheat when it comes to voting it was just a joke)