Tuesday, September 18, 2012

BOE still in the dark ages

From the Daily News:

There was an experiment Thursday night to determine whether the Board of Elections was ready to join the 21st century computer age. Of course it wasn’t.

When the polls closed that evening, the board counted the votes from the primary election two ways: by its much-ridiculed system of tallying by hand, and by uploading returns from memory sticks inside the electronic vote-scanning machines.

Unbelievably, poll workers got the job done faster by printing out the results on long strips of paper, cutting the strips by election district, writing down totals by district, adding up all the totals and delivering them to a police station for manual entry into a computer.

Virtually everyone had assumed that the board would electronically zap accurate vote counts out to the world quickly. Uh-uh. Like everything else the board does, its digital processing was a cumbersome, convoluted mess.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

so who really won the election ?

Anonymous said...

These voting machines should all have transponders that digitally announce in the clear what the vote tallies are the instant the polls close.

Anonymous said...

New York will never be up to speed when it comes to voting. It's easier for the Democrats to win with this antiquated system. In this day and age, people should be able to vote from their homes on their computers. If the voter doesn't have a computer, libraries and senior centers should be able to provide a computer and assistance so the person can vote. The votes can be tallied electronically and all the votes can be counted. Funny how lots of paper ballots never make the count. Our military should be the first ones to vote and their votes should be the first ones counted. We are in the 21st century, yet we vote like it was last century.

Anonymous said...

Equipment is irrelevant, the staff is clueless, lacks mental capacity.

Anonymous said...

"Equipment is irrelevant, the staff is clueless, lacks mental capacity."

So then you should volunteer.

Anonymous said...

Agrees ~ ~ ~

It's a system rift for fraud - there is no reason for this new system to continue - it's insulting to the voter. Paper ballots that are written too small, without much privacy in those boxes and handing the completed ballot to a poll worker who eyeballs your vote prior to scanning it it? There are too many points of failure (voter fraud) this system should be eliminated entirely. There is no reason ATM style booths be used - paperless - these booths can be battery backed up in the event of a power outage and have removable memory sticks that only the police can remove to be brought to a central counting area to tally votes.

Anonymous said...

I WANT A RECEIPT when I vote...
just like the kind I get in the market at the cash register...itemizing the candidates I selected.

I DON'T TRUST these machines
not to manipulate my votes afterward.

Anonymous said...

In the Tammany days, the receipt that you voted was good for a beer or a whiskey at your local bar.

Anonymous said...

#7 your vote is being manipulated. just listen to the White House Press Sec. spin facts and lie to the public each day.

Anonymous said...

I'll drink to that!
At least you got something for your trouble.