BTW, this "incrementing as an unsigned integer, but treating as a signed integer" was the cause of some electronic voting machines counting up to 32767 votes, and the next vote cast set the count back to -32768. Since there was no paper ballot as a backup, there was no way to recount. Wonderful, eh?
It seems to have worked for someone....
It would not be necessary to recount until about 65K votes had been accumulated, since all that would be needed would be reinterpreting the output. In fact, presumably it would be quite simple to distinguish between 1 vote and 65537, so quite a lot of votes would have to be accumulated before it was an unrecoverable situation.
I would not think that the problem was with individual voting machines but with a system used to accumulate results from voting machines, since a single voting machine would not ordinarily have anywhere near so many votes cast on it. And presumably the individual machine results were preserved. If not, truly an insane system, where any breakdown anywhere trashes the results. No-paper-trail voting is totally insane, and, in fact, high-tech voting not involving simple paper ballots is likewise crazy, unless you want to be able to manipulate the totals without making it easy to detect; (Insane, or crazy like a fox?)
I just look this up and, yes, the problem was with a tabulator, not with voting machines, per se.
What is so hard about running a marked ballot through a cheap scanner feeding a simple computer (i.e., the kind that are being tossed every day) in order to count them, keeping the paper ballots if the results are challenged?
Well, let me think.... (1) it would not create new business for the cronies of those in power. (2) it would not make it easier to manipulate the results. (3) newer, higher tech, is better, isn't it?
My town (population approx 1000) still uses paper ballots which are then fed into a device which is essential a box with a hand crank so that you can only put ballots in, you can't take them out without unlocking the back of the box. I think the device is well over a hundred years old. Votes are then tallied by hand and reported by the town clerk. Yes, I've seen ballot-counting problems in the town, but that is not a function of the technology but of carelessness on the part of town officials. The solution is not thousands of dollars for equipment but a little thought put into how ballots are counted.
www.beyondpolitics.org
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