Pre-Election Diebold Failure in Florida...

[BradBlog]

Diebold's Optical-Scan System FAILS in Sarasota, FL
County election director Kathy Dent's 'solution' as bad or worse than the actual problem...as usual...

The November 3rd Election Day is nearing, so naturally the words "glitch," "hiccup," "snafu," and "snag" are back in the headlines, instead of the word "failure," which would be the appropriate one to use in such cases.

Today, it's our old friends in Sarasota, under the continuing and now-legendarily failed direction of Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent and her latest failed voting system, this one an optical-scan system made by Diebold, featured in the Charlotte Sun's "Scanning glitch in vote machine test":

A handful of individuals were on hand this week at the Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections office where Supervisor Kathy Dent and staff tested 16 ballot scanners that will be used in the Nov. 3 city council election.

In one test a ballot with both blue and black ink was unable to be scanned. Officials pulled that scanner from service and substituted another. It didn't work either.

The machine that didn't work --- no, it's not a "glitch," it didn't succeed in carrying out the purpose for which it was designed and purchased anymore than a car which didn't start, or whose brakes failed could be said to have a "glitch" --- was the old, failed Diebold Accuvote optical-scan system, similarly used in hundreds and hundreds of counties in dozens and dozens of other states.

The "solution" Dent ultimately settled on in response to the failure of the machines made by Diebold (now calling themselves Premier and recently purchased by their larger competitor ES&S) is as bad, and as offensive, as the original failure itself...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7472

[damntexdem]

1. Jumping the gun, aren't they?

Aren't they supposed to wait til election day so as to really screw up democracy?

[BradBlog]

9. Never too early to get a jump on things in the Sunshine State! :-)

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. Never in Florida. Couldn't happen there.

[Echo In Light]

3. Happened in a lot of states in the 04' (S)election

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. I was being sarcastic.

[Echo In Light]

5. ??? I wasn't questioning your response

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Sorry. I misunderstood.

[ddeclue]

7. Well you are NOT supposed to use BLUE ink with it so I'm not surprised.

You are supposed to use the pen provided (a black pen) to fill it in.

Opti-scan works fine and it is human countable if necessary without using any machines whatsoever.

[BradBlog]

10. And they are "providing" a black pen to Absentee voters are they?

They are not, of course. And if folks use their own pens (since previously, other colors apparently worked fine), or someone swaps the pens to cause trouble, or any other number of issues at the polls, you're cool with those votes being lost potentially?

As to op-scan "works fine", you know that how, exactly? And exactly under what conditions would we know when it's "necessary" for hand-counting? You'll let us know when that's the case? Or we'll rely on the initial Diebold count to be accurate enough? (If you read the original post, there's a link to the final scene from HBO's "Hacking Democracy" in which a paper-ballot, op-scan election is flipped such that the results would not have triggered a recount, so there would be no way to know the election results were flipped.)

[flyarm]

12. Florida absentee ballots always have directions to use black pen to fill in

the votes in bold print on the ballot..just saying.

[Ezlivin]

8. It would be cheaper to simply replace the Diebold machines with shredders

And more than likely the result of the election wouldn't change.

[BradBlog]

11. Cut out the middle-man. Good idea, Ez! ;-)

[buzzycrumbhunger]

13. Kathy Dent is a huge part of the problem

We've been trying to get rid of her for ages. I've seen her described as "the new Katharine Harris," with good reason.

I think a big part of the problem is that Sarasota is a very wealthy community in general, but is also a college town and at least formerly, a haven for us old "hippie" types (until it got too expensive to live there and they forced the boat people out of the bayfront). That means we've got a lot of enthusiasm for progressive issues, but the big money really calls the shots. The fact that the area went blue last election was a huge victory, but problems like Dent remain.

[kster]

14. Link...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Selatius]

15. We should ask the Iranians how they can rig an election without using fucking electronics.

They can probably give us the same fucked up and rigged results for far cheaper.

[lpbk2713]

16. The machines failed to see the rethuglican candidate they were programmed to record a vote for.

And it made them crash.