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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 22, 2026, 4:03 PM

    @blogdiva One of the problems with touchscreens and ballot marking devices (the kind evidently used in this Tennessee county) is that there is no way to distinguish a machine error (or malicious machine behavior) from an innocent mistake (voter touched the wrong place on the screen, etc). And in practice, it's almost always the latter. So no individual case is a "smoking gun".

    But it underscores how critical it is for voters to check the paper carefully!

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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 22, 2026, 4:07 PM

    @blogdiva This is also why experts recommend away from any kind of touchscreen voting device in favor of optical scan hand marked paper ballots (except for voters who require assistive tech).

    But that's a battle for another day; no county can change its voting equipment at this point in the election.

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  • Steve Herseyn1xnx@tilde.zone
    Oct 22, 2026, 4:45 PM

    @mattblaze @blogdiva
    Hand-marked optical scan balloting is, or should be, the gold standard for voting systems. It becomes (comparatively) easy to independently verify and recount vote totals, even in the event that the scanners are unavailable or their software is in doubt.

    Assistive devices to mark ballots for visually impaired voters are a valuable adjunct.

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  • clewclew@ecoevo.social
    Oct 22, 2026, 4:54 PM

    As I remember it, Washington State government had a big consultation with our earlier computer boom notables when planning our current voting system. 1990s?

    The techies were _completely_ in favor of paper ballots (and simple ones!) for both money and security reasons.

    @n1xnx @mattblaze @blogdiva

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  • Cycy@fedicy.us.to
    Oct 22, 2026, 5:11 PM
    Electronic voting is more complex, which I'd say is generally a bad thing. More moving parts, more opportunity for failure (or sabatoge).

    But it has to be open source.

    Nobody is talking about that. They're all talking about voter error, and machine failure, and sabatoge, but not that these giant voting machine companies are allowed to install complete black boxes, secret code, secret hardware, with no way for anyone to tell they're even counting your vote.

    All machines need to be open source and open spec, independently inspected and verified. Until then, the USA is not a democracy.
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  • Mark T. Tomczakmark@mastodon.fixermark.com
    Oct 22, 2026, 4:12 PM

    @mattblaze @blogdiva This times a million.

    We used to use touch screen machines in my county in Pennsylvania and I was responsible for helping voters. Voters had lost a significant amount of faith in the machines because they believed they were misrecording votes.

    I had no reason to believe the machines had any malicious flaws, or even issues the developer thought were errors.

    What I did see was users trying to use a machine balanced on little stilts with hands that were unsteady, and to steady the whole artifice they would grasp the bezel with their other hand... And their palm would touch the top left corner of the screen. And like most low resolution touch screen devices, the machine averaged the input touch.

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