Computer glitches plague US voters

[DoYouEverWonder]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1161154,00.html

Wednesday March 3, 2004

Frozen screens and malfunctioning computers plagued some voters who tried to cast electronic ballots in yesterday's "Super Tuesday" contests to win the Democratic nomination for this year's US presidential elections.

Experts predicted such problems will be repeated on a national scale in November's presidential election.

In California's San Diego County, touch-screens failed to boot properly, causing delays of up to two hours and forcing some voters to other polling places - where they cast old-fashioned paper ballots.

Other counties in California, Georgia and Maryland reported problems with encoders, the devices that allow touch-screen computers to display candidate and ballot measures specific to one county.

[JusticeForAll]

1. Hmmm Blackouts happened at Ohio polling places

What if blackouts occur at E-voting places?

[mac2]

2. I called my IL Governor and demanded paper ballots be ....

available at all voting areas in case "something" did happen.

[RoadRunner]

3. I hate computers, all of 'em

[DrBB]

4. The real problem is when they work "smoothly"

The flip side of this story is that these problems have allowed Secretaries of State and company PR flacks to come out with "But almost all our machines worked perfectly!" statements.

News flash: the fact that the other machines didn't shoot sparks, freeze, refuse to boot, crash or otherwise misbehave of course proves absolutely NOTHING about whether the votes they took were properly registered.

The correct reply to the assertion "But most of 'em worked fine!" is "How do you know?"

edit: meant to add that last sentence.