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posted by janrinok on Monday December 16 2019, @09:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the confusing-cost-with-effectiveness dept.

Picked via Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram, the story of a massive electronic vote miscount, luckily paper ballots were available

Vote totals in a Northampton County judge's race showed one candidate, Abe Kassis, a Democrat, had just 164 votes out of 55,000 ballots across more than 100 precincts. Some machines reported zero votes for him. In a county with the ability to vote for a straight-party ticket, one candidate's zero votes was a near statistical impossibility. Something had gone quite wrong.

The worse news:

The machines that broke in Northampton County are called the ExpressVoteXL and are made by Election Systems & Software, a major manufacturer of election machines used across the country. The ExpressVoteXL is among their newest and most high-end machines, a luxury "one-stop" voting system that combines a 32-inch touch screen and a paper ballot printer.

The good news was that the chairwoman of the county Republicans realized the numbers made no sense and promptly initiated an investigation. When officials counted the paper backup ballots generated by the same machines, they realized Kassis had narrowly won.

How many trees still need to die until humans learn how to do voting properly?

Note: the original story ran on nytimes, but I respect their choice to not let me read their stories with 'Do not track' activated


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  • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday December 17 2019, @03:43PM

    by epitaxial (3165) on Tuesday December 17 2019, @03:43PM (#933302)

    As a lifelong PA resident I'll tell everyone right now. The whole state is corrupt and no politician is trustworthy. We're actually ranked #5 for most corrupt out of 50. Know how the "good ole boy" network works in the south? Yeah same exact thing but we're a northern state. We have insane tax rates (higher gasoline taxes than California, google it) and piss poor results to show for it. They build casinos that were touted as tax relief but all the profits disappear into the black hole. The turnpike toll road should be paved with gold by now but its broke because all the money gets funneled to the state police for some reason. The more you dig the more you see stuff like this. The whole state is rotten and do yourself a favor and don't get stuck here.

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