Let me preface this by saying there should only be one takeaway from the news and polls: you still have to vote.
I’ll also note, that I’m not familiar with Tennessee elections, nor do I have any inside knowledge, so I don’t have any information to dispute what Parton said, but depending on the machine, this could be the result of old technology. Georgia had voting machines that were old enough to vote by the time the equipment was retired, so it had technology from about 2000 (think Palm Pilot technology).
I’m not sure what the age ranges are here, but one of the big selling features for the iPhone when it debuted was that it had “multi-touch” input. That meant the device could recognize the input from two inputs simultaneously — without this you would never be able to use a “pinch and zoom” gesture on a touchscreen. Prior to multi-touch, a touchscreen could only detect one input at a time, and it didn’t have any capacitive technology to distinguish between a finger and say, a coat sleeve. So if someone’s finger touched a screen at roughly the same time (or just before) a sleeve or a bracelet slid down someone’s wrist and swung enough to touch the screen, the touchscreen would still only register one input, but it might end up registering the most recent touch. Depending on the spacing and other ballot design choices, that might mean the touchscreen might register an unintended choice.
I’m not saying this is what happened in this case, but I’ve done enough voter support that my colleagues and I were able to suss out this appeared to be what happened several times, particularly with older voters. But the takeaway of all this should be, go vote, and check your ballot before casting it.
For added fun and excitement, old single-point resistive touch displays have a quirk even stranger than only registering the last touch if they were touched in more places than one. In all of them I’ve messed with over the years ranging from industrial control panel monitors to PDAs to the Nintendo DS, they actually register the touch at the average coordinates of all the places on the screen where the touches are. I.e. pretty much exactly in the geometric center of all of the points. If you still have your old DS lying around you can try this for yourself.
I’ve used some of those oldschool touchscreens too, in shopping malls where they’re used as information displays for an example. It’s not infrequent that they somehow get decalibrated and your touch registers a centimeter or two away from where you touched it for some reason. With a single touch, too.
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Yes. If a voter complains about a machine I’d want someone to investigate and have that report go to a few different groups, but I’m not going to assume anything nefarious until I have more.
I always make sure to carefully check the review screen and then again the paper ballot after it has printed.
I always make sure to carefully check the review screen and then again the paper ballot after it has printed.
We have people right here on lemmy who run
sudo rm -rfcommands without checking their syntax, and you expect the average voter to check their ballots before submitting them?(kinda /s but also kinda not…)
That’s why the White House wanted the machines hacked.
There is a reason many countries don’t use machines to vote. A truly verifyable, secret, and democatric election is mathematically impossible on digital machinery. The parameters are mutually exclusive, and nothing can fix that.
Is it not verifiable? The machines where I live print out a physical paper with your votes printed on it. Before you submit your vote sheet you can look and see all of your selections. I know this is saying that the machine was flipping the choice before it printed but you could verify it afterward once you have the actual paper in your hands no? Of course how they are tallied would have some grey area I suppose but that’s not part of this allegation.
The printable component just stores the data in case the digital comes up sus or someone challenges it.
What happens when the tyrant refuses to allow challenges and those paper ballots are shredded
Machines are 1s and 0s. You could have the correct vote, review the correct name, and print out the correct thing… then after that it could all be changed and you have no way of knowing.
Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do. You can’t question the integrity of the US voting process unless you’re a Russian bot. So sad. Better luck next vote. :(
There is. If you experience issues the first step is to call 1-866-OUR-VOTE and they’ll connect you with your state’s voting officials.
AGs of states (especially blue states) have been preparing for these kinds of things and will be all over them.
It’s also worth noting that this happens in every election with touchscreens. And it’s quite possible that they are malfunctioning in any way, including changing R votes to D.
Wow seems like some shit we’ve been saying for 30 fucking years at this point that we shouldn’t rely on some digital system that can be manipulated anywhere from the screen to the database to the network to the memory to the reporting output to the…
Ink on paper is much harder to manipulate because you need to physically insert fakes, physically create,transport, insert them, and physically hide all this activity from workers, volunteers, and monitors who can’t possibly all be bought off.
Digital systems have way too many ways to be fucked with invisibly, at the electron level, inside wires and computer chips and on spinning hard drives through code and commands and erased files, done remotely from other states or countries, and if you need someone on the inside you may only need one or two people. Even if the manufacturers are honest, even if they create the best possible product. It’s like “backdoors in encryption that only work for the good guys” - it’s a screen door on a bank vault with an “employees only” sign.
The same is true for the scantron machines but with those, there is a hardcopy paper source that has a physical, observable chain of trust as a fallback (assuming of course all procedures are thorough and followed).
Of all the systems in the world, breaking the one that gives the power is the ultimate target. It’s irrational to think this was a good idea.
I knew instantly as a fucking teenager that “touch screen voting machines” was a bad idea, and here I am pushing 50 and still saying it. All it’s done was prove to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that no one knows what the fuck they’re doing; not then and not now.
Modern machines produce a human-readable paper ballot, and we can do exit polling to check for statistical anomalies, us election integrity probably isn’t attacked at the voting machine level.
At least since the 2000s or so.
You dropped this: /s
This is also being reported in Texas, Missouri
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature?
defeature
FFS Americans.
Better to link to Mediaite directly than the Yahoo news portal.
Simpsons did it!
I remember seeing videos of this in the presidential election as well
Hopefully, people will start recording this and posting it.
One problem with this.
I had the misfortune of living in Texas for two years.
Not only do they check your ID in order to walk in, they will arrest you if you record a video of the polling machines.
When I expressed concerns, such as “what if the machine is having issues that I’d like to document” and “I researched before the voted and took notes on my phone that I’d like to reference”
They encouraged me that my printed ballot is the ultimate source of truth and to always verify that before leaving. And that I can use my cell phone outside.
Yo thats so fucked! I went to my polling place for the first time a few years and was completely unprepared. I asked my pollsters if I could whip my phone and do some light research. They were completely happy and fine with it (Pittsburgh, PA).
This is partly to prevent voter manipulation and blackmail, e.g. i give you 500 euros and you film yourself voting for my candidate.
This happens with touchscreens every election.
That’s why:
- You have to have properly calibrated equipment (touch screens in this case). And, 2) a validate/confirm button/screen that has to be selected before the votes are actually submitted.
The proper course of action in the above case would be to alert the pole workers to the problem and they should then remove the defective equipment from use until it is properly calibrated and certified accurate. Which it should have been before being placed in service originally.
I remember back in 2000 seeing a flash animation of “florida voting machine” on Jay Leno probably, where the user would try to click on Gore, and Bush’s name would jump under the mouse, with Gore jumping away. The clip was chasing Gore’s name all around the screen.
Holy shit I found it. Turns out it was 2004 with Bush/Kerry. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yq79wG3DqvI
I’m glad I vote on paper here, but it’s still read by a black box scanning machine so I have no idea what happens in there. But, I’d have no idea what happens anywhere after I turn in my ballot.
We’ll need to depend on the state election officials to hold the line, and call for a new election if the they find the machines are compromised.
UN observers are denied observation access.
If we didn’t insist on knowing the results as quickly as possible we could just use paper ballots and take a couple weeks to count them.
The best solution is a digital system that can be instantly tabulated, but that provides a paper copy the voter can verify before submitting.
The only official count is the paper ballot count.
We get instant results, and accurate official counting without a speed component.
It’s quite possible to use paper ballots and still get the results quickly. Many countries do this.
Yes, I volunteer regularly in Germany. It works just fine and is fully paper based.
The “secret” to both quick and accurate counting is to use machine counting - not counting by humans.
Want to prove it to yourself? Here’s a simple test to perform:
- Purchase a 500 sheet ream of blank printer paper.
- Count the sheets in it.
Bet you won’t come up with 500. Count them again; again, I bet you won’t come up with 500 and I bet you won’t come up with the same number as the first time you counted them.
A whole lot of countries make it work:
I tried to pick one of the largest population countries I could from the lists on that site - I chose the UK for this example.
Well, according to this website www.electoralcommission.org.uk, which appears to be the official government website for such things in the UK. I don’t see where more than 1 person counts each ballot.
Also, this page www.electoralcommission.org.uk seems to say: 1) they may/may not agree to a recount and 2) I still don’t see where they are recounted by more than 1 person.
I’ve been looking for an “official website” in the UK that lists both the original count and recount(s) numbers, but can’t seem to find one (sorry about that). The closest I could find is on en.wikipedia.org about a Dec 1910 election (on that page under “General election December 1910: West Bromwich”) - again, sorry I couldn’t get a direct link to it.
My point is that the numbers change each time you count them. When you have far too many people (in “certain countries”) claiming “It’s all rigged! There is a ‘deep state’ controlling it! The numbers changing ‘prove it’!, etc”; I don’t really see how you are going to make it more accurate than machine counting.
As a side note: When the “Cyber Ninjas” recounted the 2020 Arizona votes they came up with a different number that the official machine counted total - which only showed that the original/officially declared winner won by MORE VOTES than the second place candidate (even though it was the second place candidate’s party that claimed the original count was wrong www.cnbc.com).
Um…but for counting ballots you don’t need to count to 500? In Germany each voting volunteer counts like maybe 70-100 votes max. Then its passed to a second one counting, if he gets the same results it’s fine, if he doesn’t it starts at person 1.
You get results in around 3-4 hours. Then its locked away and counted again in the morning to reconfirm.
Most people manage to count to around 100.
As another demonstration, Just about every bank i’ve been to dispenses bills by way of an automatic counting machine.
Dude you split the 500 pack into sheets of 10 and lay them crosswise over each other. You haven’t ever done this, have you?
I have done this and still miscounted. Pages stick together here and there. Some of my stacks of 10 were 11. Slowing down helped. Having a second person count helped more.
If you want to make this accurate to voting first separate every page, then drop them one at a time in a trash bag, give it a good shake, then take them out and count them.
You don’t get fresh reams of paper from voting places
Not that it matters, but I was talking about counting filled-in ballots by putting them in stacks of 10 and setting alternate stacks crosswise. Once the polls closed, we did a spot-check at the polling place to ensure we had the expected results – that no one walked out with a ballot and that the machine tally matched a hand count. Hand counts were frequently inaccurate, so two people checked one another and when we found our numbers did not match the machine count, we slowed down and found ourselves in error rather than the machine (which had been fed the ballots slowly over the day rather than in the 1/2 hour we were frantically trying to verify).
So, placing them in stacks of 10 fixes it all?
Let’s see, Pennsylvania had ~5,000,000 votes cast in 2022 per ballotpedia.org for senator. That would mean ~500,000 stacks of 10.
You’re sure everyone of them has exactly 10 sheets; not 9 or 11 or 8 even? They never get knocked off the table, mixed up, etc?
And remember, all parties need to count all of the ballots independently from each other - can’t trust a party to count their own candidates ballots ;-). And I’m certain we want every party to come up with the exact same count for each candidate.
Looks like (from the same reference above), that there were 7 candidates running for senator in that election. Five of which received any votes (guess the 2 write-in candidates didn’t even vote for themselves 🤷). So that’s 5M x 7 counts = 35M ballots to count . . . by hand . . . for just one mid-sized state.
And also, there is almost always more than one race on a ballot (I usually see more like 10+ on mine). So, are you going to count them once (in stacks of 10) - tallying 10+ races per ballot? Or do you plan to count them 10+ times (once for each race)?
With all due respect, I can’t see that being in any way practical even given an army of very careful people with multiple months of time.
Most countries hand-count paper ballots.
It can be made accurate, with the right checks and balances. And that’s what most countries do. You can’t argue it’s impossible, because it’s done all the time.
The link below lists some of the systems countries use to ensure election integrity and accurate counts. Some of these are only available if you use paper ballots and count by hand.
I’m not arguing it can’t be done - provided you are dealing with reasonable and logical people.
What I’m (trying) to say is: It can’t be done (at scale) perfectly - which is what unreasonable and illogical people demand.
And, unfortunately, the latter is what far too many people in “certain countries” seem to be demanding lately.
It can’t be done (at scale) perfectly
It most certainly can, and did so until the advent of electronic voting.
The trick is production line counting: multiple people (3 - 5) count every single vote, while each counter has a watcher, handing each ballot off to the next counter for verification in production line style, and others all watch the room and everything in it. All political parties are represented; all watchers and counters are observed and switched up; everyone in the room has both the right and the responsibility to speak up about any anomaly, and they do.
Even when electronic counting gets fucked up, like in Palm Beach County in 2000, manual counting was still used. Remember butterfly ballots and hanging chads? The counting rooms in Palm Beach County worked every ballot in exactly this way, and at the time, night after night, the evening news was full of videos of watching them do it.
I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it is absolutely possible and even common to manually count ballots rapidly in such a way that not a single vote gets missed. We did it for over two hundred years in the US, and that’s how it was in the 90s before electronic counting became a thing.
All you’re really telling the rest of us is that you don’t know the history or the mechanics of voting.
Capitals below are for emphsis, not yelling.
Please site (i.e. reference) where 100,000+ votes were manually counted MULTIPLE TIMES for MULTIPLE RACES ON THE SAME BALLOTS, and the results for ALL canditates were EXACTLY the same for each count.
Also: I’m NOT SAYING that either machine and/or manually counting is not “exact enought” - I FULLY believe it is and has been for decades/centuries.
Or even faster, visually split them into 5 stacks of 100. Assumes constant thickness, but then make them even by moving pages from the highest ones to the lowest ones until they are all identical. If you can’t make them all identical, then you don’t have 500.
Then split one of the 100s into 5 again the same way.
Then pick up one of the stacks of 20 and count it to confirm it is 20.
Or for an arbitrary number of sheets, do the same but then set aside any sheets that won’t even up (because the stack isn’t an even multiple of whatever number you divide it into). Then you just have to count the final stack, multiply that to compensate for the splitting (for that layer), add the set aside sheets (for that layer), then move on to the previous layer of splitting and repeat.
Or, count out 20 sheets, then measure their thickness, then measure the thickness of the entire stack, divide by the 20 thickness, multiply by 20, though this one will have some error due to the measurements not being exact (even if you use calipers, paper does compress a bit, which complicates exact measurements).
They didn’t do that in 2024 while being told by the criminals they stole it so what makes you think this will go any differently?
We should only use paper ballots and no screens. This is how I feel.
Remember hanging chads in Bush v. Gore?
We have technology that allows that to be impossible now but still use paper ballots.
My point is that they’ll find away to discount the votes they don’t like.
They are going to do that regardless dude
Absolutely.
Real question is - will Americans find balls to finally raise hell and get into streets and protest for real (or do general strikes) or will they keep posting “Why doesn’t someone arrest Trump/Hegseth/etc?” on social media all day long, fearing loss of any comfort or convenience if they are asked to fight for their freedoms?
I can’t tell you the number of times that Americans and citizens of other moral-high-ground countries insisted how I had to fight against my tyrannical regime, decades ago. And we did, and I fought fucking police on the streets.
And here we are, they need to put their money where their mouth is and all we hear is - crickets.
Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer Western culture and countries, I would not change it for anything but I am so fucking tired of watching all those loud cunts not having any balls while telling others what they should do (or should have done).
How do all the people suggesting Iranians should have fought the regime feel now, eh?
In case it is not clear, there is 0% chance Trump and billionaires will give away what they hold, peacefully. It is still surreal that there are so many naive people even though they could just glance at history and see how it will play out.
Good luck.
yea some of us can’t afford to risk that, it’s not all just comfort it’s survival. it’s a police state
And it will stay that way till you grow a pair of balls.
This exact mindset is how you end up under the yoke and frankly you deserve it for not fighting against it.
Depending on the ethnicity of the person you replied to, drawing attention to themselves in any form of protest may very well bring an immediate life or death situation. Us pale folk need to be stepping up, and good on those that already are.
You think fighting for your rights is risk free? Bloodless, it has never been that way. If you want change, you have to save yourselves and resist and fight for that freedom, just like your great grand parents did during union riots or veteran rallys. You think the people under nazi occupation often threw them out bloodlessly, no. But I’m sure you expect others to do it for you.
This user wants left leaning people getting shot and bombed until there’s no one left to push back against Trump (and US fascism) in any form. That’s what Trump wants, he’d love for the opportunity to finally declare nation wide martial law, get rid of any sense of term limits, and kill all who rise against him. There’s a reason mass deportation of citizens is part of Project 2025 - it’s to get rid of the opposition entirely.
Their comment vastly underestimates the depravity of the modern US government, who has already bombed and disappeared citizens. A huge, violent uprising might make the fascist government flinch for a moment, but then they’d remember that they have the most funded military in the world multiple times over and just go to town with reaper drones.
The only chance US residents have is through subtle, quiet sabotage, something that wouldn’t be reported on internationally until the damage was already done. Or, a military coup, which most US residents wouldn’t be able to initate themselves.
If this user wants a bunch of asylum seeking US residents escaping to Canada, along with whatever left leaning opposition remains dead, then their comment makes sense.
I wonder why this user isn’t rising up against their own government who most definitely trades and supports the US in certain ways. I wonder why they aren’t violently fighting the rise of global fascism, which is certainly affecting their country. I wonder if they are blind to what’s happening with fascism in their own country because they are hyperfixated on shitting on the oppressed for “not doing anything” elsewhere. I wonder if they are counting on billionaire-owned media organizations to tell them what’s happening in the US, missing the fact that those organizations intentionally avoid reporting on resistance movements.
This article was an eye-opener for me :
https://edgnts.substack.com/p/why-americans-dont-just-do-something?r=99ug36
Odd strategy wishing death on the oppressed but go off or whatever. How does it look from that “moral highground” of yours?
Your wishing death upon yourselves for not fighting for your right to live the way you had been, waving a no king sign around and pretending like you did something is not fighting, that performative bull rap is just that.
Also, “moral highground” are you fucking stupid, your debating morals while your rights are getting stripped away and you sit their thinking “look at this guy with the soapbox” when I’m telling you if you don’t fight for yourselves, why should anybody help you.
Actually explain it, why should I help someone who won’t help themselves, and no, going out and “protesting” is not fighting for your rights, the federal Gove doesn’t give a shit so this action is POINTLESS.
I say “moral highground” because its easy to sit behind your cpu screen and say people just need to “grow a pair” as if it’s just that easy. As if chastizing people at a no kings protest is any more effective than holding a sign at one. Extremely naive and simplistic view of the world if you think its that easy to just overthrow the government with the biggest military industrial complex in the world.
Im assuming youre not American? Why dont you come over and show us how its done then? You make it sound so easy you should be to get it all done in just a few days, a week max.
Real question is - will Americans find balls to finally raise hell and get into streets and protest for real (or do general strikes) or will they keep posting “Why doesn’t someone arrest Trump/Hegseth/etc?” on social media all day long, fearing loss of any comfort or convenience if they are asked to fight for their freedoms?
You know the answer. It’s the same reason that you don’t raise hell and do a general strike against your simp-for-the-USA government.
Odds are very good that your country uses the US dollar to trade and that you’re part of the US-led International Monetary Fund, and that your government trains with the US Armed Forces, follows their military dictates, and buys US weapons. Why do you just watch your government openly serve the USA?
You can buy a plane ticket and start the rebellion any day now, just like Americans, or you can at least stop your own country from serving the USA’s interests and feeding the beast.
But you don’t. Sad.
This article was an eye-opener for me :
https://edgnts.substack.com/p/why-americans-dont-just-do-something?r=99ug36
That was a great read, thanks. It does a great job of clearly setting out the stark truth.
The people are fighting, the problem is the media stomps out coverage of it in an attempt to cull the movement. Not our fault u believe the propaganda, the media has been bought by the people we rebel against. I have to ask, how long did your people have to fight? How long did it take to see results? How big is your country? It’s not that the people aren’t trying, that’s what they want you to think. It’s that we are a big country and change takes time. Maybe instead of walking around with your nose above your ears, you can relate to our struggle and help us out by telling us what worked instead of spouting some sexist bullshit about “growing balls”. Way to tell us where you stand on sexism and how much u gobble up corporate propaganda.
Just takes one Molotov cocktail to get the revolution started.
They won’t, theyll protest then nothing, just like every one of their stupid no kings protests, nothing changes after them but they keep doing this performative nonsense to make themselves feel better.
So, when is your country going to leave the US banking system?
Just wondering how you can live with yourself.
You do realize many country’s are backing away from American systems right? Soon as America trys anything, the country will move. Also notice how your trying to leaver your countrys ‘position’ over others when your being criticized? Sounding a lot like a MAGAt to me.
Why are you still using US-backed services? Why are you allowing your government to support fascism in any way? America has already tried something. Shouldn’t you be fighting for your freedom from the US?
you do realize many country’s are backing away from American systems right?
sorry you cant read. incase it wasn’t obvious my country is moving away as well.
What US banking system? The one with the paper cheques?
That’s because the NoKings protests have been purchased by the elite and defanged. The original catalystic members were pushed out when they spoke for actually being disruptive.
So you’ll stop usimg Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and other corps that fund fascism right? Your gov will stop sharing private info with the US right?
alternatives croping up everydays, you guys seem to being a lot of excuses for facists btw
Oh the machines are broken so cancel election until further review, womp womp womp
Violence is a legitimate form of political expression.
Inheritance tax fears make people say crazy things.
