URGENT RE: PA MACHINES ! (Philly)

[cjsmom44]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/4/122548/529/386/652522

If you are in Philadelphia, PA and you click the box for Obama, and then click straight Democratic ticket, it will cancel out your vote for Obama. No one is quite sure why, but it's happening . I just talked to the Obama campaign , and they are urging folks either to just vote straight Democratic ticket , or to choose each candidate individually- but not both. Please Digg and spread this piece of information to anyone widely. My understanding is there are Obama folks in Philly trying to work through this problem, but please let anyone who might be voting know as well. Sorry for the shortness of this diary , but I just wanted to get the word out there.

[Sulawesi]

1. kicked

[Ozma]

2. WTF is WRONG with those people in PA?????

Can't they find a competent programmer for the stupid machines?

I can't believe this! But I have to...

Fire every election official in PA, and go back to paper ballots, PLEASE!

[NorCalDem]

6. But you see...

you're under the assumption that the programmers WANT the machines to accurately count the vote.

"Go back to paper ballots, PLEASE!"

Yep, and you already know the solution. Papers ballots FTW...

[soleft]

3. Does it work same way for McCain if you vote straight Repub ticket?

[cjsmom44]

4. I don't know

I don't know...I just came across this on the KOS

[bdamomma]

5. yea, wouldn't it be interesting if the repub ticket flipped for Obama

why doesn't this happen to the repigs????

[EFerrari]

7. Probably not. I've never read or heard a credible report where it

flipped FROM the Republican.

[amyrose2712]

8. Keep this Kicked!

[cjsmom44]

9. Yup

Important stuff...it was on the KOS....

[bdamomma]

10. kick

[bdamomma]

11. kick

keep this kicked

[cjsmom44]

12. Thanks

:kick:

[droidamus2]

13. Not really a problem

I hate to say it but this is not necessarily a problem as stated. The straight vote button is a toggle switch like marking all your emails as read by hitting one button. What it actually does is not say set everything to the Democratic candidate it says change every Democratic candidates mark, which at that point would be NOT selected, to the opposite or in this case to selected. The programmer expected everybody to pick straight ticket first and only rather than picking some and then hitting the button. Not totally excusable as a programmer it would not have been that hard to program it so that if some boxes had already been marked to bring up an advisory message to notify the voter that they would be erasing their previous choice or to give them the option of retaining any previous choice. So in this case yes the programmers could have been more complete in the way they programmed it but the voters need to understand what it is that the Vote Democratic ticket button actually does.

[FatDave]

20. Disagree.

It's easier to program it to just set them all to on when straight ticket is selected. To toggle takes additional and unecessary programming. You've got to check the current state and then set it to the opposite value.

Now, it's possible that each button is an object with a toggle() member function, but it would presumably also have a check() and uncheck() member function (there will be times when you have to clear a ballot for instance, so you would just iterate over the buttons and call uncheck on each), and calling check() would be the logical and simpler choice (and better performing, though only old-timers like me worry about performance it seems).

Anyhow, toggling on straight ticket selection makes no sense whatsoever. There are shitty programmers out there, but this should have been caught in testing too. Most likely it was coded to a specification that required this braindead functionality.

[droidamus2]

22. Agreed

I am not saying that the programming couldn't have been better. What it appears to me is somebody took the same functionality I have in my e-mail to toggle the 'checked' box so I can delete large amounts of spam. I usually mark what I want to keep, hit the toggle which switches the ones I don't want on and the ones I want to keep off. I totally agree that in the case of voting this is very lazy and since I had heard that people had problems with this in the primaries it should have been corrected prior to this election. As I stated earlier in the least if a person chose 'straight ticket' and boxes are already checked the user should have been given the option to retain those already marked. Obviously your programming solution is much more elegant than mine.

[damntexdem]

14. This is also true of machines here in Denton Co., Texas.

The county bought a bunch of old machines from elsewhere and put them into service.

Luckily, we also have the choice of a paper ballot. Of course, when I voted early on the first day of such voting, the paper-ballot line was twice as long as the machine-voting line.

[Undercurrent]

15. k & r

This is about as stupid as it comes! Sheesh!

Spread the word!

[Fluffdaddy]

16. Sounds like an urban legend to me. We in philly been using these same machines for 6 years

Never never never heard this before.................urban legend in my book

[TrogL]

17. This is a bug in all the vote machines

It's embedded in the software and it's being reported consistently everywhere.

I'm surprised the word hasn't gotten out better.

We need volunteers working the lines saying to everybody "DO NOT USE THE STRAIGHT TICKET FEATURE because it will mess up your vote".

[Patiod]

18. No No No - The straight ticket vote is fine

you just can't vote straight ticket AND THEN push you Presidential vote, because "straight ticket" turns all the lights on, and the pushing anything under it toggles the vote off. Push again - on. Push again - off.

I've been showing people all morning in PA. You can absolutely vote straight ticket. Please DO!!! Just don't do anything but push the "record my vote" button after you do so!

OR Vote for each candidate on its own

JUST DON'T DO BOTH!!

[dipsydoodle]

19. After 8 years

Id'a thunk the importance of getting this right might have at least have started to sink in. :sarcasm:

[Kitty Herder]

21. K & R