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The Voting Machine Malfunction at Ames Straw Poll — in Context |
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Not surprisingly, the delayed results at yesterday’s Ames straw poll in Iowa were caused by a voting machine malfunction.
Mary Tiffany, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Iowa, said officials were forced to count ballots by hand after one of the voting machines malfunctioned while tabulating. Optical scan ballots – not punch cards – are being used in this non-binding straw poll.
Of course, the machines used to count the vote weres owned by Diebold.
Apparently, some Ron Paul supporters had concerns about Diebold’s role about a month ago.
The Ron Paul group is very concerned that the machines will be gamed in order to make their candidate’s showing less than what it should be and in order to inflate the results for those whom the Republican National Committee (RNC) want to have a good showing.
Some Paul supporters are now threatening to file a federal lawsuit over the matter.
Here are some details of the malfunction by way of the Des Moines Register, and this is where it gets interesting:
Two machines caused the problem, said State Auditor David Vaudt. “What likely happened is someone submitted their ballot too quickly after the other,†he said. The ballots from those machines were hand counted, then re-fed into the system to recalculate the vote. A campaign poll-watcher said in one instance, a black box contained 500 paper ballots but the machine’s memory said it had scanned in 498.
As of yet, there is no evidence of corruption in the counting of the ballots, but a mistake of 2 votes per 500 due to machine malfunction is reason enough for concern, especially given Diebold’s incredibly shady and partisan history.
Two votes out of 500, you say, what is the big deal? That is one out of every 250, or 0.4%. A quick wikipedia search tells me that in 2004, 122,293,332 votes were cast for Presidential candidates. 0.4 percent of 122,293,332 is 489,173 votes. That’s right, if the same malfunction occurred nationwide, nearly 500,000 votes would not count.
In Florida, in the 2000 Presidential election, the final certified vote had the Bush/Cheney ticket on top by 0.09%. A variation of 0.4% would have been more than enough to swing this crucial swing state, upon which the entire election hinged.
Electoral integrity is a real problem that needs to be addressed, before the next election. I’ve listed a few resources below which will help you become more informed on the issue:
Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Diebold’s Problems Worse Than Reported, Tests Find
Overview of Electoral Integrity
The Brad Blog
I’m all for updating our voting technology (I even think Internet voting should be explored), but there needs to be safeguards and paper trails, and that is what these systems lack. On the whole, I oppose widespread private manufacturing of these machines that are so crucial to our democracy. There is certainly a place for private contractors, but they need to be open about their work and their mistakes, something the current manufacturers have been loathe to do.
Few more links:
Black Box Voting
And work by Ronald Rivest (wrote the book on computational algorithms, plus you can thank him for being able to purchase over the Internet securely).
First of all, optical scan machines were used.
Second of all, the actual ballots marked by the voters and scanned by the machines were hand counted.
Sorry, Charlie, no conspiracy here.
How many still believe that there will be 2008 elections?
In honest elections, these guys are sure to lose. So, either they rig the elections *again*; or… they just use the new bush law that allows him to seize power in the case of a “catastrophic” event…
So, rigged elections or power grab?
We never even needed electronic voting machines. Paper ballots are reliable, inexpensive, and it takes a lot of effort to commit voting fraud because its hard to dump 1,000,000 ballots without SOMEBODY knowing about it.
On the other hand, electronic voting machines can’t be trusted at all. Once it goes into digital bits, say goodbye to paper trails and accountability. I’m a computer programmer, believe me, in the world of data, anything can happen.
In any case, the straw poll is unscientific and not even legitimate. Voter fraud could have taken place and frankly, it wouldn’t even be illegal.
In the end the Iowa straw poll turned out to be a huge pair of clown shoes. A huge embarassment for the GOP in its neverending quest for more funding. At $35 a ticket for the privilege to ‘vote’, there were only 14,000 takers and most were paid for by romney, huckabee, brownback and tancredo. Pretty sad when you blow tens of thousands to get voters and they apparently don’t vote for you, they’re just here for the free food..
Steve, I’m wondering how you’d see a modern voting machine work? I personally would like modernization of the system, if only it could be trusted. Machines with a paper trail, is that a good idea? Can it be done? Is there a better way?