The machines were flipping votes in a judge's race. This is horse & buggy level coding your grandparents could do (and many did do). Do they even bother to test this crap before rolling it out?
The only reason we know about it is because of a law passed in 2019 requiring election issues of this nature to be reported publicly. In how many other areas across the country are these problems occurring and the public remains in the dark?
This is why most of Florida only uses scantron sheets and a pen. Just bubble in your choice next to the candidate's name and that's it. You are then escorted to a machine that takes in your ballot and you are done. How hard can that be? Florida was the center of an election mess in 2000. Today, the state finishes its elections in time.
@BizSuitStacy I'm just giving you a hard time. This is what happens when you privatize public processes. Likely what happened is some company that makes these machines lobbied a few members of the legislature and convinced them that this type of voting was better in $ome way. Of course, they then were required to solicit "bids" from competitors, and ultimately "chose" the one that originally lobbied. The reason they did not use scantron forms? Well somewhere along the line they were convinced by those selling the electronic system that those were less secure or more problematic or more expensive. And like all computerized things, there are bugs and glitches. A well-documented societal gripe, even though data tends to support computers are more accurate than people.
Where I live we have used a scantron type of ballot for as long as I have been voting - since the early 90s - and nobody complained at all until 2020. Somehow that system is no longer good enough.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of electronic-only methods for most things. My ideal car would still have a carburetor, my phone would have a dial, and I should have to sign for all credit card transactions. I understand manual counting of hand written ballots would be inaccurate and inefficient (I am in the process of doing a similar task at my job with old records, and it is taking months), but I see no advantages to an electronic screen over a paper scantron except that it saves paper.
@trollslayer I knew you were kidding around. The scantron forms are a simple way of validating input = output. I'm with you on cars with carburetors, manual transmissions, etc.
