Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread
389 Responses
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David Hood, in reply to
The nice lady at our local polling place was quite happy to let me take a picture of the machine they use to scan the ballots
Like everything in the US, it varies widely with state, but asking is always the best plan.
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
And One News, with an extremely annoying Jack Tame video. I think his work, like that of all the NZ correspondents, has been pretty good, but he needed a producer to tell him to tone it down on that video.
And also his attempt at vote suppression - telling people that the election is on the second Tuesday in November - is poor form.
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Tristan, in reply to
thanks for that Paul. This shows just how hard it is for Romney to win. He as to basically wipe the board with the toss up states.
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Salon has a story on stealthy updates to Ohio's tabulation software. Some technical confusion in the story reminds me of many about our own #wtfmsd snafu, but it does sound potentially serious if there's write access to the main database in each location.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
As a stress baker with no time to bake today, all I can bring to this discussion is a copy and paste of how I coped last election. With carbs
You cast 45 votes? This is election fraud on a massive scale.
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Gareth Davidson, in reply to
You'd be better off graphing the number of winners as a percentage of entrants by each letter.
Then ranking by start gate (no horse has ever won from gate 18), jockey's mother's maiden name, country of origin, passport number...
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From the context, I think they mean they haven’t properly set the touch areas. But “calibration” probably sounds more sciency.
The touch screens, depending on their quality, go out of whack. What is displayed on the screen (names, ticks etc) isn't linked to the touch screen, except by measurement (oh, you want 100 mm down by 80 mm across, let me look that measurement up on my table, that falls within the range of this person, I'll put a tick in their box).
I can't remember why they go out of whack, but I think that some touch screens do, and better ones don't.
So they get regularly recalibrated, I think the process involves the computer putting touch marks on the screen and saying "push here", and then it compares it's results to what it expects and adds plus/minus on x and y axes for all future touches.
It's a mad system and no where near as reliable or as good as our "here's a piece of paper, go tick the names you want' one. Even more stupid when you consider the advantages that could occur through voting via a computer - a printed out receipt that you can take away to confirm who you voted for, isn't available for most of them.
If the touch screen reports the wrong measurements then the computer will display the wrong results. Why it would increase the range where it chose one candidate and decrease the range where it responded to another I have no idea.
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Sacha, in reply to
Why it would increase the range where it chose one candidate and decrease the range where it responded to another I have no idea.
Exactly
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
(oh, you want 100 mm down by 80 mm across, let me look that measurement up on my table, that falls within the range of this person, I’ll put a tick in their box
I wonder what the code looks like....
IF:: 100,80 THEN:: "Obama"
IF NOT:: THEN:: "Romney"
Rigged or Lazy?
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I'd very much like to see a technical analysis of an aberrant machine at very least establish a technical corruption and minimise arguments of political corruption.
Edit: Especially with the reports of late patching. -
Bad story-padding award of the week goes to whoever wrote (on Stuff) that Obama was seeking to become the first Democrat since Bill Clinton to be re-elected. Well, duh!
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Ah doh, yeah. Windows Mobile used to make you touch three points after a cold start. It then uses some sort of least-squaresy thing to calculate the position based on the raw data.
I'm not sure how modern touch screens deal with this, but my Nexus often gets completely out of kilter and needs a power-cycle to reset. Static buildup?
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
What language is that Steve? PL-1?
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David Hood, in reply to
Especially with the reports of late patching
As I understand it, the late patching was not on the machines taking the vote. It was on the second stage machines that add up the votes from within an area.
The Ohio district court has declined to issue an injunction against the software being installed. -
Kyle Matthews, in reply to
I believe (I read a couple of technical articles on them after the last election, so my memory is fading), it's certainly possible for two points a certain distance apart on the touch screen to get reported closer together (which would have the effect of 'vote obama' getting smaller, as well as the whole thing moving in a particular direction but staying relative to each other.
However an area not being reported entirely is suspicious to say the least.
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Tim Michie, in reply to
Thanks David.
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
What language is that Steve? PL-1?
From what I remember it's C- well, C- is what they wrote on my exam paper ;-)
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You'd be better off graphing the number of winners as a percentage of entrants by each letter.
Then ranking by start gate (no horse has ever won from gate 18), jockey's mother's maiden name, country of origin, passport number...
Its a f&^king two horse race......... Today's potential winners are the letters O and R.
A buck each way.
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Miche Campbell, in reply to
Only if you're talking about the Presidency, which they weren't at the time.
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Here's a Flash-free Presidential voting map for you all.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Bad story-padding award of the week goes to whoever wrote (on Stuff) that Obama was seeking to become the first Democrat since Bill Clinton to be re-elected. Well, duh!
Brilliant. And not wrong!
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The HuffPo Results page is looking scary, still early days though.
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Trivia-wise, Romney is seeking to become the first Republican president since 1928 without a Nixon or Bush on the ticket (or so the Internet says). Which gives me an excuse to post this slide I just scanned in from an impeach Nixon march in 1973.
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Brent Jackson, in reply to
Except they've coloured in West Virgina wrong. The numbers say Obama is winning it, but they've coloured it Romney, and given Romney the Electoral Votes.
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Quite apt I thought, what with the horses an' stuff. Red Moon Green Moon or Blue Moon?.
If Obama wins I think we can be assured that the voting system in the US, however amateur it seems to us civilised people, is reasonably robust. If Romney romps home I think we could safely assume the opposite.
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