CS Students Called In To Monitor E-Voting 20
An anonymous reader writes, "Electronic voting machines used in Tuesday's elections apparently caused only isolated problems, although watchdog groups say it's too early to give an overall grade to their performance. One county in California, hoping to avoid any technological glitches, hired computer-science graduate students to set up and troubleshoot the machines. The behind-the-scenes look revealed some warning signs of e-voting." From the article: "The county election official expected many elderly poll workers to be confused by the technology, so she recruited... 59 computer-science graduate students from [UC] Davis to help poll workers troubleshoot the machines on Election Day."
Students (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
..."Talk to her another day"? (Score:1)
Shweet (Score:1, Redundant)
Scary (Score:1)
Woah! A whole 15 pages? That must be rough. Who do they have running those polling stations?
Oh, I guess that explains some of the phyche of the people running the polls in California.
Wrong choice (Score:3, Interesting)
CS grad students would be a great choice for auditing the design and the source code. But that's not what happens on Election Day.
Credit for good intentions, though.
Re: (Score:1)
Some 15 page manuals can contain 14.95 pages of useless junk. There was probably even 3-4 pages of "this product is not for internal use", "warning! do not operate when wet", "caution! do not attempt to insert memory card into ear". 2 pages of FCC certification for electrical interference, and maybe 5 pages of "how to turn on this unit". Troubleshooting was probably 1 page of "if the unit behaves strangely, call 1
Shooting the messengers? (Score:3, Informative)
"Sir you published a way to change the votes in your web site, and that is clearly an act of terrorism. You are under arrest!"
So in the future no one would even try to publish that kind of results.
Re: (Score:1)
Is identificate defined as Identify + Authenticate (i.e. We think know who you are, and we know it's really you)?
Or does it mean that the Powers That Be take your mug shot, then take a DNA sample?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not a native english speaker. Should have used the spellchecker.
15 page manuals? (Score:1)
Just because it's "only" 15 pages, doesn't mean it's 15 pages of useful info. I'm willing to bet that 5 pages are "stuff you shouldn't do with the unit" like "warning! not for interal use!" and "warning! do not operate when when". 3-4 page of FCC certification "this unit doesn't emit interference, and accepts interference from other units", and finally, one page of troubleshooting, which covers "try turning it off
Re: (Score:2)
No, Van Cleefe does not "got my tongue." (Score:1)
good article but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:good article but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let Casino's run electronic voting (Score:2, Insightful)
Democracy still? (Score:2)
Hooray! (Score:1)
e-voting (Score:1)