Ohio's Voting Machines Busted, and Won't Be Fixed

uploaded by peacechicken August 23, 2008 at 06:37 pm
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Ohio's Voting Machines Busted, and Won't Be Fixed by peacechicken

Ohio's electronic voting machines, made by don't-call-them-Diebold, are broken, and won't be fixed by Election Day. Does that sound right to you? What do you think of a company that can't fix its software by November? What do you think of an election board that plans on using the broken machines anyway?

The problem can't be fixed before the Nov. 4 election, so Premier Election Solutions and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner are issuing guidelines to counties for how to avoid the problem.

"We will continue to monitor the situation and provide boards of elections with the instruction and support they need to ensure an orderly and efficient election and an accurate count of Ohioans' votes," Brunner said in a memo released today.

Premier, formerly Diebold Election Systems, initially speculated that the problem was a conflict between its system and anti-virus software.

But in a letter Tuesday to Brunner, Premier President David Byrd admitted that further testing showed a source-code error that can cause votes not to be recorded when memory cards are uploaded to computer servers under certain circumstances.

Also working in the tech industry and no stranger to dealing with recalcitrant software, I have a better solution than Premier's: use a workaround. In this case, absentee ballots. If you live in Ohio and plan on actually using those voting machines, you should also assume that your vote will be thrown out. Absentee ballots are still counted the old-fashioned way.