When I first saw this, my first reaction was "Wow, maybe a good programmer could fix the horrendous interface used now". This voting machine http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=25628 was changing votes by poor design, not malice (I hope...). It wouldn't take much for a decent programmer to fix it up a bit. Maybe the open source voting machine that everyone wants is already here!

I did read that, and watched the clip. Clearly both feet aren't off the ground for ~1/3 of the time, so the article text is suspect to me. I agree that both white feet are off the ground at 52-53, and no significant load is on either foot at this point. What I am referring to is that it looks like there is an additional part below the foot (perhaps some black shock absorbing/traction material) that remains in contact longer on the back foot, and makes contact sooner on the front foot, with the back foot making full separation after the front foot makes initial contact. This could also easily be a video artifact, shadow, compression error, etc. Either way, if I was the engineer that pulled this off, I would have no hesitations calling it a run, and perhaps my last post was a bit nit-picky (and maybe not justified).

It looks to me like their is something below the foot that makes contact before the white part of the foot makes contact. From the high speed camera, it looks like this make contact on the front foot before the back foot leaves the ground. I thought to be running, both feet need to be in the air at once. Otherwise you were walking. Maybe I am just seeing the video wrong? Regardless, it looks very impressive.

I just used the ES&S automark last week (A slightly different machine from the same company). The tolerance of where you need to press is less than the width of my finger. I took a video of this to prove it. http://shultzonline.com/vote/ In the video there are only two candidates, yet they are still right next to each other, and in the video you can clearly see the calibration is off enough to incorrectly select the wrong candidate. You cannot argue that this interface is unacceptable.

The calibration was so far off when I voted this week (on an ES&S automark), that I talked the election official about the calibration. More or less it is done the same way you used to with the palm pilot (touch 4 corners). The problem is that there is also some parallax issues as the screen is about 45 degrees off vertical. The result is the calibration can be a little off. A little off is fine and normal if the interface is good, but on the automark machines, they put the candidates names right next to each other so even a small error in calibration will result in the wrong candidate being selected. I took a video of my self voting, (it's here: http://shultzonline.com/vote/ ). in the video is is clear that not the person I am pressing is selected, and that a candidate only 5mm away is selected.

This is also how it work for me. I always use the automark machine because I am interested in it. Last week when I did use it, the calibration was so far off that pressing one candidate would select a different one. I was so surprised I took a video of the process. It is online here http://shultzonline.com/vote/ The idea behind the automark is to help people who have a hard time voting with paper and pencil. These are the exact same people who would have a hard time telling that the wrong person was chosen. I don't worry about intentional vote rigging, as it is easy to detect a problem for most people when the ballot is printed, but I still expect that every vote should count properly.

I used the ES&S automark this past week. The calibration was so far off that I got the vote flipping talked about. I was so alarmed that I took a video with my cell phone. You can see it here. http://shultzonline.com/vote/ I was so upset that I talked to the election officials, and went to the clerks office a few days latter. More or less I found out that all these machines are pieces of crap. A simple solution would have been to add a little space between the names (like they do on ATM machines) so that a small miss calibration would not have been such a serious deal.

She lied to the police. I read the report. By my count she lied to the police about 5 different things, and several times each.