False Dichotomies

I was just checking out the news when I came across this Slashdot update on the Diebold voting machine debacle. Here's the blurb from Slashdot:

"Premier Election Solutions (a subsidiary of Diebold) has acknowledged a flaw that causes the systems to lose votes. It cannot be patched before the election and the machines are used in half of Ohio's counties, but they are issuing guidelines for avoiding the problem that presumably contain a work-around. While Diebold initially blamed anti-virus software for the glitch, they have now discovered that the bug was their own fault for not recording votes to memory when the cards are uploaded in 'certain circumstances' — something their initial analysis missed. It would be nice to hope that Ohio poll workers would be tech-savvy enough to make this a non-issue, but they had poll worker shortages last year and might need tech-savvy people to volunteer."

First of all, I find it laughable that they tried to blame the problem on anti-virus software. Why would a voting machine need anti-virus software in the first place? Does it run Windows? Maybe I'm crazy but I would imagine that something as critical as a voting machine would be built out of sturdier stuff. Not just a proprietary application running on top of a 3rd party operating system. I don't really know much about how these things are set up, though, so maybe I should withhold judgement.

As it turns out the real problem was with the way the machines recorded certain voting cards to memory. The thing that gets me is that they say that the problem only occurred under 'certain circumstances'. I don't know about you, but I'd like a bit more information on just what those circumstances are. I mean they could be "if you voted for a candidate Diebold doesn't support". Not that I want to sound like some kind of left-wing conspiracy theorist or anything.

I guess this whole thing bugs me because I really want these things to work. Electronic voting machines are one thing, but it could go a lot further than that. If done correctly I think the Internet could do wonders for political participation. I'm lucky enough that my voting place is right next to my house, so I don't really have any excuse for not voting. Other people are apathetic enough, but I can't imagine it would hurt our voter turnout of people could do it without taking any extra time out of their day. Hopefully this won't remain the standard for the use of technology in the voting process.