Oct 22, 2026, 2:51 PMRE: https://mastodon.social/@TwraSun/117484270657855967
Dolly Parton's sister, Stella Parton, says that a voting machine in Tennessee repeatedly switched her selection to Republican Marsha Blackburn, so she had to correct her ballot paper three times before she could vote. She's not alone. Other voters in Tennessee have reported similar issues while trying to vote for Democrats.
@angiebaby doesn't this kind of look like a very common misalignment on the touch screen? I say so because I've encountered it all the time at like a gas station etc. on these resistive style touch screens. The bounding box is misaligned down from the actual selection so the top of the bottom box is actually the bottom of the top box. notice that when this person is able to select the democratic candidate its by moving their finger down, ie selecting the 'real' top of the bottom position box. not to say that this type of calibration couldn't be misused nefariously, and perhaps even more nefariously claimed to be a legitimate common bug when secretly nefarious. But saying that the voting machine 'repeatedly switched her selection' feels like a misrepresentation of whats going on on a technological level
@jsenzel @angiebaby Yes, it looks very much like a misalignment. But that doesn't make it less of a problem.
And it's perfectly fair to say that it "switched" it from where the finger was pointing. It's not relevant at all how this works on a technological level, the final UI is what is used, voters don't bit-fiddle.
@jsenzel @angiebaby This is probably not on purpose, though, but it can still make it biased. The bias mechanism could for instance be that there is a random variation, but it is only fixed if it goes in a specific direction.
Example: 500 votes on one screen, 500 on another. 50% votes D, 50% votes R. Randomness makes screen 1 transfer 10% of votes to D and screen 2 transfer 10% of votes to R. Screen 1 gets fixed because staff finds it important, meaning 250+225=475 for D, 250+275=525 for R.
@jsenzel @angiebaby How is the order chosen on these screens? Is it random for each voter, or is the order decided by some committee?