{"id":4748,"date":"2004-01-13T10:12:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-13T17:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4748"},"modified":"2004-01-13T10:12:00","modified_gmt":"2004-01-13T17:12:00","slug":"sometimes_the_o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/01\/13\/sometimes_the_o.html","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes the old ways are best"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the butterfly ballot brouhaha in Florida 2000, there’s been a concerted effort to get new, bright, shiny, computerized, touch-screen, electronic voting machines out to the populace. Because, after all, if it’s on a computer, it’s clearly more accurate than all that messy paper chaddy analog stuff, right?<\/p>\n

Um, right?<\/p>\n

Ask the election officials in (stop me if you’ve heard of this place) Broward and Palm Beach Counties, Florida<\/a>. There, in a special election last week, a few problems cropped up.<\/p>\n

The counties were responding to Tuesday’s tight special election for a state House seat that covers portions of Broward and Palm Beach counties. Out of 10,844 votes cast, returns showed Ellyn Bogdanoff defeating Oliver Parker by 12 votes, with 137 voters casting blank ballots on touch-screen voting machines.
\nFlorida law requires a manual or hand recount of all “under-votes” and “over-votes” in an election decided by less than 0.25 percent.
\nBut touch-screens leave behind nothing to count by hand.<\/p>\n

So not only could no recount be made, per state law, but the number of “blank” votes (computer error? voter error?) exceeded the margin of victory.<\/p>\n

Yeesh.<\/p>\n

The use of potentially insecure computer systems, with unproven (and unexaminable) software, which don’t leave a manual tally … all sound like a recipe for disaster. And I say that as someone who works with computer systems all the time …<\/p>\n

Not that the old ways are more foolproof (as Florida 2000 showed). But at least there we had some understanding of the flaws in the system.<\/p>\n

(via RISKS<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the butterfly ballot brouhaha in Florida 2000, there’s been a concerted effort to get new, bright, shiny, computerized, touch-screen, electronic voting machines out to the populace. Because, after all,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":31241,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/06\/john-husted-tries-to-become-the-new-katherine-harris.html","url_meta":{"origin":4748,"position":0},"title":"John Husted tries to become the new Katherine Harris","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 6-Nov-12 10:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"Harris was the Republican\u00a0Secretary of State for Florida who played such a charming role in the 2000 recount brouhaha.Husted is the Republican Secretary of State for Ohio who's played such a charming role in the 2012 election to skew and\/or reduce early voting, mess around with voting rolls and provisional\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4323,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/09\/24\/click_vote.html","url_meta":{"origin":4748,"position":1},"title":"Click-vote","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 24-Sep-03 3:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"After the Florida 2000 debacle, everybody swore up and down that all those crappy old manual voting machines were just too unreliable, too unusable, too confusing, and too prone to...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29871,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/16\/a-level-if-low-playing-field-in-ohio.html","url_meta":{"origin":4748,"position":2},"title":"A level, if low, playing field in Ohio","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 16-Aug-12 9:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Ohio's popular early voting law -- a response to major crowds and difficulty getting into vote in 2004 -- was done away with earlier this year. Instead, individual counties were allowed to decide whether or not to allow early voting, and for what hours.And the funniest thing happened. \u00a0In Republican-leaning\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F08%2FVoting-Precinct-Closed-thumb-250x187.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5841,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/10\/the_list_is_lef.html","url_meta":{"origin":4748,"position":3},"title":"The list is left","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 10-Jul-04 10:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida is scrapping its much-condemned \"These May Be Felons So Consider Not Letting Them Vote List\" -- though not because of its inaccuracies, but because it left off Hispanic felons....","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2004"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2004","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2004"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31136,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/05\/election-shenanigans-in-ohio.html","url_meta":{"origin":4748,"position":4},"title":"Election shenanigans in Ohio","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Nov-12 11:06am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'd like to think I would object to these kind of tactics regardless of the partisan politics behind them. \u00a0This particular list is nothing new, but a good summary of Husted's actions this political season (though it leaves out his earlier casting deciding votes in a GOP-leaning fashion for individual\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6159,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/04\/touch_the_vote.html","url_meta":{"origin":4748,"position":5},"title":"Touch the vote","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-May-04 9:49pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Electronic voting just got a major setback in California. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley ended five months of speculation and announced Friday that he was decertifying all electronic touch-screen...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}