Electronic Voting Machines: Another Reason for Distrust Thereof

This is on the “control panel” side of the Sequoia ImageCast Ballot Marking Device voting machines used in Dutchess County. I put my finger in the middle of the CLOSE POLL button and the panel misread a press on the REPORTS button.

That’s one of several misreadings of the day. Earlier, while setting up the machine for the day, it misread horizontally and gave me a STATUS report instead of a ZERO report.

Last year the same sort of thing happened. It’s always explained as “being out of calibration”, which makes me wonder just exactly when the panels are calibrated and what the criteria for success might be.

One of the few good things to come out of having a totally dysfunctional State Legislature is that New York has managed to delay and stall and fumble around until other states demonstrated the utter stupidity of direct-recording, no-paper-trail electronic voting machines. The ImageCast machines are a spectacular boondoggle, but far less catastrophic than what we’ve seen in Florida, Ohio, California, and …

Oh, and after a 16-hour shift as a BMD Election Inspector, exactly zero handicapped voters (actually, any voters) took advantage of the machine to cast their vote. A report from someone who’s in a position to know says that in the last election, the bottom line was $250 per vote on the ImageCast machines. I think that’s probably low.

My tax dollars at work, fer shure!