ENGAGET
VOTE
2006 "Diebold says"glitch-free," just don't touch those touchscreens"
Apparently Diebold has gotten the machines to work relatively well together, but only when using a mouse.
If the touchscreen is tapped, the machine loses contact with its peers.
Diebold is touting this mouse thing as a fix, and is offering to provide 5,500 mice for their e-poll books if state officials in Maryland give the go-ahead. Unfortunately, during a recent mock election, a poll-worker tapped the touchscreen despite repeated warnings to the contrary, and screwed up the system, requiring a reboot which took 30 seconds.
There are NOT "glitches".
A "glitch" is something along the lines of a momentary delay in processing, or a misdrawn graphic in a GUI, or a typo in a screen message, or something equally transient/minor.
These problems are failures of core system functionality.
I'm sure Diebold would like the press and everyone else to continue to minimize them by calling them "glitches", but I don't think we should oblige them.
Exercise of the [VOTING] franchise is a right for which people have fought and died; trivializing a failure of that process by calling it a "glitch" is disengenuous and insulting. -Rsk
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