OMFG

I now officially adopt "Oh, for fuck's sake" as my new motto.

Ah, if I may - what, exactly, is the OMFG for? Since they prolly used off the shelf parts for the screen (like most tablet pc's and dept store touch screens), It is a normal problem.. Yeah, they could have used better parts that don't need the calibration, but it's not THAT drastic of a failure.

dreikin: pull your head out of the machine and think about the bigger picture - the "failure" is in the "voting".

And I think one of the main points here is that they were demonstrating how it goes from broken to calibrated, and how easy that was and sure to work. Then, see, like, it didn't work and all.

On top of that, the whole "It can only be uncalibrated one way" is complete malarky as well. He made a big deal at the start about it being uncalibrated and always going to the 3rd party candidate, as if every uncalibrated or miscalibrated system would behave the same.

Epic Fail.

Not to mention the error that was hitting "Straight Republican" and getting "Ralph Nader" for the Prez candidate. WTF did that have to do with calibration? LOL...

...*tear*

And let's not forget the solution here: voters are to just keep on pushing around on the screen til the candidate of their choice lights up, however they can get that to happen. So that's what, 3 minutes? 5 minutes? 10? But that's ok, cuz there's lots of other machines just sitting around waiting for someone else to show up at the polls, right?

Ana: Right. As though after pushing random buttons and getting random results (on the screen) leads to anyone believing that they actually voted for a particular candid, or for that matter, at all.

I'm all for touch-feely machines like this, but only if they produce a readable paper ballot that the voter then puts in a box.

1) That the pres vote didn't change was prolly intentional - most better-designed systems (in general, not voting-specific) try to avoid over-riding user settings that are more specific than a general option when the general option is selected afterward - the demonstrator prolly just did not realize.

2) I agree that the system should have a more obvious calibration method - say, first thing for every voter, no bypass, and with a recalibrate option always available while voting.

3) This machine apparently does produce a paper trail (well, half of one, anyway)

4) Am I the only one that thinks good ol' scantrons would be best?

I agree completely. Scantrons are the best, and if you want a machine to produce the scantron sheet that would be fine.

This is of course what we do in Minnesota. We use a scan-tron like thing. We do not have long lines on election day and there is rarely any trouble counting the votes.