Let me preface this by saying there should only be one takeaway from the news and polls: you still have to vote.
I’ll also note, that I’m not familiar with Tennessee elections, nor do I have any inside knowledge, so I don’t have any information to dispute what Parton said, but depending on the machine, this could be the result of old technology. Georgia had voting machines that were old enough to vote by the time the equipment was retired, so it had technology from about 2000 (think Palm Pilot technology).
I’m not sure what the age ranges are here, but one of the big selling features for the iPhone when it debuted was that it had “multi-touch” input. That meant the device could recognize the input from two inputs simultaneously — without this you would never be able to use a “pinch and zoom” gesture on a touchscreen. Prior to multi-touch, a touchscreen could only detect one input at a time, and it didn’t have any capacitive technology to distinguish between a finger and say, a coat sleeve. So if someone’s finger touched a screen at roughly the same time (or just before) a sleeve or a bracelet slid down someone’s wrist and swung enough to touch the screen, the touchscreen would still only register one input, but it might end up registering the most recent touch. Depending on the spacing and other ballot design choices, that might mean the touchscreen might register an unintended choice.
I’m not saying this is what happened in this case, but I’ve done enough voter support that my colleagues and I were able to suss out this appeared to be what happened several times, particularly with older voters. But the takeaway of all this should be, go vote, and check your ballot before casting it.
For added fun and excitement, old single-point resistive touch displays have a quirk even stranger than only registering the last touch if they were touched in more places than one. In all of them I’ve messed with over the years ranging from industrial control panel monitors to PDAs to the Nintendo DS, they actually register the touch at the average coordinates of all the places on the screen where the touches are. I.e. pretty much exactly in the geometric center of all of the points. If you still have your old DS lying around you can try this for yourself.
Yes. If a voter complains about a machine I’d want someone to investigate and have that report go to a few different groups, but I’m not going to assume anything nefarious until I have more.
I always make sure to carefully check the review screen and then again the paper ballot after it has printed.
I always make sure to carefully check the review screen and then again the paper ballot after it has printed.
We have people right here on lemmy who run
sudo rm -rfcommands without checking their syntax, and you expect the average voter to check their ballots before submitting them?(kinda /s but also kinda not…)
Ive also experienced touch screens that take the average of where you and something else tapped and chose that point. My DS comes to mind; touching eith two styluses made the DS choose a line dead center of the two touches.
Could also be poor calibration, but im willing to bet its just good ol election fraud
The voting machine companies were purchased by conservatives trump sycophants c. This will not be an election. This is their last chance, they will stop at nothing. The last one was likely stolen as well. We did nothing. Trump said it on stage, we did nothing. Do you think you’ll feel differently when it happens again next month? Is it finally far gone enough to risk everything? We’re all about to find out.
Yeah…. It’s really looking like MAGA pretty much owns this shit now. But vote anyway, if there’s any shred of justice after shit is tallied, everything will count. Don’t let them steal democracy!
Just a reminder that the Tennessee voting machines in both Davidson and Williamson counties – the two mentioned in the article – are both made by ES&S, a company with a long history of questionable behaviors.
Elections in the US are state-run, usually run by an Elections Commission (or office with similar name) via the Secretary of State. Thus, anyone who sees this kind of thing at the polls can also personally check the manufacturer of that machine, often via their own Secretary of State’s website. Here’s Tennessee’s: the actual maker of the voting machines in each county is listed in a pdf linked near the top.
Very few people seem to pay attention to who is behind the actual machine, but the right wing has been all over it since the dawn of electronic voting. From Bush v Gore and the temporarily negative 16,000 votes in Volusia County in 2000 to today, electronic voting machine anomalies are many. Without going into detail, not all voting machines are alike, and whenever there is fuckery, the same manufacturer names seem to crop up.
Whatever your beliefs, it’s worth paying attention to, especially if your own machine does not seem to be acting without bias.
If you’re not sure who runs your town’s machines or how to find that information, search “[my state] voting machines made by” in DDG or another search engine that has no financial motivation to steer you wrong by promoting misinformation or fake sites. Also, make sure you look for .gov links. For example, I used “nashville tennessee voting machines made by” in DDG and the Tennessee Secretary of State site was the first hit.
This kind of thing makes no sense. If they want to change your vote (which assuredly Stephen Miller does) they will just do it in data, there’s no reason to do it in the UI so people see it personally.
Exactly what they did in Ohio 2004. They targeted remote servers used to tabulate the various districts:
Why not maximize their chances by doing it at every possible step? Much less likely to be used as proof if the initial input matches the output. Just look at the 2000 election where Gore got -16,022 votes in a Volusia county precinct with only 585 registered voters. They tried to dispose of the proof but savvy reporters found the tabulations and pieced them together, and… Nothing came of it, so yeah I guess they can do whatever the fuck they want.
it was so infuriating watch Gore be all high-minded and noble while conceding way too fucking early when he should have been a pitbull trying to uphold peoples sacred right to vote. Dude was like “well fox news said I lost so might as well just give up.” 🙄 🤡 🤬
From then on, nothing Democrats could do would overcome the appearance that they were trying to steal the election on technicalities. And nothing Republicans could say would overcome the suspicion that they had planned the whole thing.
That’s why Fox News jumped all over it and declared Bush the winner. The later fact it was discovered how easily the machines could be hacked leaves no doubt they 100% stole Florida. This isn’t even counting the Brooks Brothers riots and that should be dead criminal known as Roger Stone.
Most citizens don’t realize that you can do that.
That’s why the White House wanted the machines hacked.
There is a reason many countries don’t use machines to vote. A truly verifyable, secret, and democatric election is mathematically impossible on digital machinery. The parameters are mutually exclusive, and nothing can fix that.
Is it not verifiable? The machines where I live print out a physical paper with your votes printed on it. Before you submit your vote sheet you can look and see all of your selections. I know this is saying that the machine was flipping the choice before it printed but you could verify it afterward once you have the actual paper in your hands no? Of course how they are tallied would have some grey area I suppose but that’s not part of this allegation.
Machines are 1s and 0s. You could have the correct vote, review the correct name, and print out the correct thing… then after that it could all be changed and you have no way of knowing.
The printable component just stores the data in case the digital comes up sus or someone challenges it.
What happens when the tyrant refuses to allow challenges and those paper ballots are shredded
Also in TN, and had no issues. Individual claims shouldn’t be taken seriously. If it were a mass number of complaints, that’s different.
Last thing we need is people not trusting the results.
There was something off about mine last time in TN. I think a final confirmation that didn’t pop up or a paper that didn’t print or something.
My county during Trump’s first run printed out ballots that didn’t have the choices printed on them, just a scannable QR code. That went away immediately and now you can see the choices you made…
Assuming the QR still on there says the same thing, anyways.
tl;dr voting machines will always be a mistake.
tl;dr voting machines will always be a mistake.
As long as there’s a physical ballot that gets checked by the voter as part of the process and then physically counted for the official result, voting machines can be a non-mistake.
Do yall not get a printed paper ballot from the machine that you then review and turn in?
Obviously we have to account for the lowest common denominators; those who are so uncritical they would not review the printed ballot.
But still, it’s not like the machine is sending your votes in over the internet… right?!
Right, 100% we get a paper ballot. My understanding from reading this was that she selected the Democrat for governor, got to the final “summary” screen and it showed the Republican as her selection. And this happened multiple times. All this before the paper ballot.
Personally, I think it’s user error. Unless it is a significant number of people reporting issues like this.
I dunno, the adage “the purpose of a bill is what it does,” comes to mind. This could be a glitch that, to republicans in charge of running the election, is a “feature, not a bug.”
This is also being reported in Texas, Missouri
I’m glad I vote on paper here, but it’s still read by a black box scanning machine so I have no idea what happens in there. But, I’d have no idea what happens anywhere after I turn in my ballot.
We’ll need to depend on the state election officials to hold the line, and call for a new election if the they find the machines are compromised.
UN observers are denied observation access.
If we didn’t insist on knowing the results as quickly as possible we could just use paper ballots and take a couple weeks to count them.
The best solution is a digital system that can be instantly tabulated, but that provides a paper copy the voter can verify before submitting.
The only official count is the paper ballot count.
We get instant results, and accurate official counting without a speed component.
It’s quite possible to use paper ballots and still get the results quickly. Many countries do this.
Yes, I volunteer regularly in Germany. It works just fine and is fully paper based.
The “secret” to both quick and accurate counting is to use machine counting - not counting by humans.
Want to prove it to yourself? Here’s a simple test to perform:
- Purchase a 500 sheet ream of blank printer paper.
- Count the sheets in it.
Bet you won’t come up with 500. Count them again; again, I bet you won’t come up with 500 and I bet you won’t come up with the same number as the first time you counted them.
Um…but for counting ballots you don’t need to count to 500? In Germany each voting volunteer counts like maybe 70-100 votes max. Then its passed to a second one counting, if he gets the same results it’s fine, if he doesn’t it starts at person 1.
You get results in around 3-4 hours. Then its locked away and counted again in the morning to reconfirm.
Most people manage to count to around 100.
Dude you split the 500 pack into sheets of 10 and lay them crosswise over each other. You haven’t ever done this, have you?
I have done this and still miscounted. Pages stick together here and there. Some of my stacks of 10 were 11. Slowing down helped. Having a second person count helped more.
If you want to make this accurate to voting first separate every page, then drop them one at a time in a trash bag, give it a good shake, then take them out and count them.
You don’t get fresh reams of paper from voting places
Or even faster, visually split them into 5 stacks of 100. Assumes constant thickness, but then make them even by moving pages from the highest ones to the lowest ones until they are all identical. If you can’t make them all identical, then you don’t have 500.
Then split one of the 100s into 5 again the same way.
Then pick up one of the stacks of 20 and count it to confirm it is 20.
Or for an arbitrary number of sheets, do the same but then set aside any sheets that won’t even up (because the stack isn’t an even multiple of whatever number you divide it into). Then you just have to count the final stack, multiply that to compensate for the splitting (for that layer), add the set aside sheets (for that layer), then move on to the previous layer of splitting and repeat.
Or, count out 20 sheets, then measure their thickness, then measure the thickness of the entire stack, divide by the 20 thickness, multiply by 20, though this one will have some error due to the measurements not being exact (even if you use calipers, paper does compress a bit, which complicates exact measurements).
So, placing them in stacks of 10 fixes it all?
Let’s see, Pennsylvania had ~5,000,000 votes cast in 2022 per ballotpedia.org for senator. That would mean ~500,000 stacks of 10.
You’re sure everyone of them has exactly 10 sheets; not 9 or 11 or 8 even? They never get knocked off the table, mixed up, etc?
And remember, all parties need to count all of the ballots independently from each other - can’t trust a party to count their own candidates ballots ;-). And I’m certain we want every party to come up with the exact same count for each candidate.
Looks like (from the same reference above), that there were 7 candidates running for senator in that election. Five of which received any votes (guess the 2 write-in candidates didn’t even vote for themselves 🤷). So that’s 5M x 7 counts = 35M ballots to count . . . by hand . . . for just one mid-sized state.
And also, there is almost always more than one race on a ballot (I usually see more like 10+ on mine). So, are you going to count them once (in stacks of 10) - tallying 10+ races per ballot? Or do you plan to count them 10+ times (once for each race)?
With all due respect, I can’t see that being in any way practical even given an army of very careful people with multiple months of time.
It can’t be done (at scale) perfectly
It most certainly can, and did so until the advent of electronic voting.
The trick is production line counting: multiple people (3 - 5) count every single vote, while each counter has a watcher, handing each ballot off to the next counter for verification in production line style, and others all watch the room and everything in it. All political parties are represented; all watchers and counters are observed and switched up; everyone in the room has both the right and the responsibility to speak up about any anomaly, and they do.
Even when electronic counting gets fucked up, like in Palm Beach County in 2000, manual counting was still used. Remember butterfly ballots and hanging chads? The counting rooms in Palm Beach County worked every ballot in exactly this way, and at the time, night after night, the evening news was full of videos of watching them do it.
I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it is absolutely possible and even common to manually count ballots rapidly in such a way that not a single vote gets missed. We did it for over two hundred years in the US, and that’s how it was in the 90s before electronic counting became a thing.
All you’re really telling the rest of us is that you don’t know the history or the mechanics of voting.
Most countries hand-count paper ballots.
It can be made accurate, with the right checks and balances. And that’s what most countries do. You can’t argue it’s impossible, because it’s done all the time.
The link below lists some of the systems countries use to ensure election integrity and accurate counts. Some of these are only available if you use paper ballots and count by hand.
I’m not arguing it can’t be done - provided you are dealing with reasonable and logical people.
What I’m (trying) to say is: It can’t be done (at scale) perfectly - which is what unreasonable and illogical people demand.
And, unfortunately, the latter is what far too many people in “certain countries” seem to be demanding lately.
A whole lot of countries make it work:
I tried to pick one of the largest population countries I could from the lists on that site - I chose the UK for this example.
Well, according to this website www.electoralcommission.org.uk, which appears to be the official government website for such things in the UK. I don’t see where more than 1 person counts each ballot.
Also, this page www.electoralcommission.org.uk seems to say: 1) they may/may not agree to a recount and 2) I still don’t see where they are recounted by more than 1 person.
I’ve been looking for an “official website” in the UK that lists both the original count and recount(s) numbers, but can’t seem to find one (sorry about that). The closest I could find is on en.wikipedia.org about a Dec 1910 election (on that page under “General election December 1910: West Bromwich”) - again, sorry I couldn’t get a direct link to it.
My point is that the numbers change each time you count them. When you have far too many people (in “certain countries”) claiming “It’s all rigged! There is a ‘deep state’ controlling it! The numbers changing ‘prove it’!, etc”; I don’t really see how you are going to make it more accurate than machine counting.
As a side note: When the “Cyber Ninjas” recounted the 2020 Arizona votes they came up with a different number that the official machine counted total - which only showed that the original/officially declared winner won by MORE VOTES than the second place candidate (even though it was the second place candidate’s party that claimed the original count was wrong www.cnbc.com).
As another demonstration, Just about every bank i’ve been to dispenses bills by way of an automatic counting machine.
They didn’t do that in 2024 while being told by the criminals they stole it so what makes you think this will go any differently?
I didn’t know GOP officials bought Dominion voting machines in 2025
Better to link to Mediaite directly than the Yahoo news portal.
Get agun, you’ll need it soon.
Real question is - will Americans find balls to finally raise hell and get into streets and protest for real (or do general strikes) or will they keep posting “Why doesn’t someone arrest Trump/Hegseth/etc?” on social media all day long, fearing loss of any comfort or convenience if they are asked to fight for their freedoms?
I can’t tell you the number of times that Americans and citizens of other moral-high-ground countries insisted how I had to fight against my tyrannical regime, decades ago. And we did, and I fought fucking police on the streets.
And here we are, they need to put their money where their mouth is and all we hear is - crickets.
Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer Western culture and countries, I would not change it for anything but I am so fucking tired of watching all those loud cunts not having any balls while telling others what they should do (or should have done).
How do all the people suggesting Iranians should have fought the regime feel now, eh?
In case it is not clear, there is 0% chance Trump and billionaires will give away what they hold, peacefully. It is still surreal that there are so many naive people even though they could just glance at history and see how it will play out.
Good luck.
The people are fighting, the problem is the media stomps out coverage of it in an attempt to cull the movement. Not our fault u believe the propaganda, the media has been bought by the people we rebel against. I have to ask, how long did your people have to fight? How long did it take to see results? How big is your country? It’s not that the people aren’t trying, that’s what they want you to think. It’s that we are a big country and change takes time. Maybe instead of walking around with your nose above your ears, you can relate to our struggle and help us out by telling us what worked instead of spouting some sexist bullshit about “growing balls”. Way to tell us where you stand on sexism and how much u gobble up corporate propaganda.
This article was an eye-opener for me :
https://edgnts.substack.com/p/why-americans-dont-just-do-something?r=99ug36
yea some of us can’t afford to risk that, it’s not all just comfort it’s survival. it’s a police state
And it will stay that way till you grow a pair of balls.
This exact mindset is how you end up under the yoke and frankly you deserve it for not fighting against it.
Depending on the ethnicity of the person you replied to, drawing attention to themselves in any form of protest may very well bring an immediate life or death situation. Us pale folk need to be stepping up, and good on those that already are.
You think fighting for your rights is risk free? Bloodless? it has never been that way.
If you want change, you have to save yourselves, resist and fight for that freedom, just like your great grand parents and older did during union riots or veteran rallys. You think the people under nazi occupation often threw them bloodlessly, no. But I’m sure you expect others to do it for you.
This user wants left leaning people getting shot and bombed until there’s no one left to push back against Trump (and US fascism) in any form. That’s what Trump wants, he’d love for the opportunity to finally declare nation wide martial law, get rid of any sense of term limits, and kill all who rise against him. There’s a reason mass deportation of citizens is part of Project 2025 - it’s to get rid of the opposition entirely.
Their comment vastly underestimates the depravity of the modern US government, who has already bombed and disappeared citizens. A huge, violent uprising might make the fascist government flinch for a moment, but then they’d remember that they have the most funded military in the world multiple times over and just go to town with reaper drones.
The only chance US residents have is through subtle, quiet sabotage, something that wouldn’t be reported on internationally until the damage was already done. Or, a military coup, which most US residents wouldn’t be able to initate themselves.
If this user wants a bunch of asylum seeking US residents escaping to Canada, along with whatever left leaning opposition remains dead, then their comment makes sense.
I wonder why this user isn’t rising up against their own government who most definitely trades and supports the US in certain ways. I wonder why they aren’t violently fighting the rise of global fascism, which is certainly affecting their country. I wonder if they are blind to what’s happening with fascism in their own country because they are hyperfixated on shitting on the oppressed for “not doing anything” elsewhere. I wonder if they are counting on billionaire-owned media organizations to tell them what’s happening in the US, missing the fact that those organizations intentionally avoid reporting on resistance movements.
This article was an eye-opener for me :
https://edgnts.substack.com/p/why-americans-dont-just-do-something?r=99ug36
Odd strategy wishing death on the oppressed but go off or whatever. How does it look from that “moral highground” of yours?
Your wishing death upon yourselves for not fighting for your right to live the way you had been, waving a no king sign around and pretending like you did something is not fighting, that performative bull rap is just that.
Also, “moral highground” are you fucking stupid, your debating morals while your rights are getting stripped away and you sit their thinking “look at this guy with the soapbox” when I’m telling you if you don’t fight for yourselves, why should anybody help you.
Actually explain it, why should I help someone who won’t help themselves, and no, going out and “protesting” is not fighting for your rights, the federal Gove doesn’t give a shit so this action is POINTLESS.
I say “moral highground” because its easy to sit behind your cpu screen and say people just need to “grow a pair” as if it’s just that easy. As if chastizing people at a no kings protest is any more effective than holding a sign at one. Extremely naive and simplistic view of the world if you think its that easy to just overthrow the government with the biggest military industrial complex in the world.
Im assuming youre not American? Why dont you come over and show us how its done then? You make it sound so easy you should be to get it all done in just a few days, a week max.
Real question is - will Americans find balls to finally raise hell and get into streets and protest for real (or do general strikes) or will they keep posting “Why doesn’t someone arrest Trump/Hegseth/etc?” on social media all day long, fearing loss of any comfort or convenience if they are asked to fight for their freedoms?
You know the answer. It’s the same reason that you don’t raise hell and do a general strike against your simp-for-the-USA government.
Odds are very good that your country uses the US dollar to trade and that you’re part of the US-led International Monetary Fund, and that your government trains with the US Armed Forces, follows their military dictates, and buys US weapons. Why do you just watch your government openly serve the USA?
You can buy a plane ticket and start the rebellion any day now, just like Americans, or you can at least stop your own country from serving the USA’s interests and feeding the beast.
But you don’t. Sad.
They won’t, theyll protest then nothing, just like every one of their stupid no kings protests, nothing changes after them but they keep doing this performative nonsense to make themselves feel better.
That’s because the NoKings protests have been purchased by the elite and defanged. The original catalystic members were pushed out when they spoke for actually being disruptive.
So you’ll stop usimg Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and other corps that fund fascism right? Your gov will stop sharing private info with the US right?
alternatives croping up everydays, you guys seem to being a lot of excuses for facists btw
So, when is your country going to leave the US banking system?
Just wondering how you can live with yourself.
What US banking system? The one with the paper cheques?
You do realize many country’s are backing away from American systems right? Soon as America trys anything, the country will move. Also notice how your trying to leaver your countrys ‘position’ over others when your being criticized? Sounding a lot like a MAGAt to me.
Why are you still using US-backed services? Why are you allowing your government to support fascism in any way? America has already tried something. Shouldn’t you be fighting for your freedom from the US?
you do realize many country’s are backing away from American systems right?
sorry you cant read. incase it wasn’t obvious my country is moving away as well.
I can read just fine. Backing away implies that they haven’t completely backed away yet. Why aren’t you doing anything about it?
Also, if you’re going to start up the personal insults about reading, for some reason, I’m sorry that you can’t write:
You do realize many country’s are backing away from American systems right? Soon as America trys anything, the country will move. Also notice how your trying to leaver your countrys ‘position’ over others when your being criticized? Sounding a lot like a MAGAt to me.
many country’s are
trys
your
countrys
your
Don’t throw stones in glass houses, and all that.
Just takes one Molotov cocktail to get the revolution started.
I remember seeing videos of this in the presidential election as well
I remember back in 2000 seeing a flash animation of “florida voting machine” on Jay Leno probably, where the user would try to click on Gore, and Bush’s name would jump under the mouse, with Gore jumping away. The clip was chasing Gore’s name all around the screen.
Holy shit I found it. Turns out it was 2004 with Bush/Kerry. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yq79wG3DqvI
Hopefully, people will start recording this and posting it.
One problem with this.
I had the misfortune of living in Texas for two years.
Not only do they check your ID in order to walk in, they will arrest you if you record a video of the polling machines.
When I expressed concerns, such as “what if the machine is having issues that I’d like to document” and “I researched before the voted and took notes on my phone that I’d like to reference”
They encouraged me that my printed ballot is the ultimate source of truth and to always verify that before leaving. And that I can use my cell phone outside.
This is partly to prevent voter manipulation and blackmail, e.g. i give you 500 euros and you film yourself voting for my candidate.
Yo thats so fucked! I went to my polling place for the first time a few years and was completely unprepared. I asked my pollsters if I could whip my phone and do some light research. They were completely happy and fine with it (Pittsburgh, PA).
This happens with touchscreens every election.
That’s why:
- You have to have properly calibrated equipment (touch screens in this case). And, 2) a validate/confirm button/screen that has to be selected before the votes are actually submitted.
The proper course of action in the above case would be to alert the pole workers to the problem and they should then remove the defective equipment from use until it is properly calibrated and certified accurate. Which it should have been before being placed in service originally.
