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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

> “The Hart eSlate machines are not malfunctioning, the problems being reported are a result of user error — usually voters hitting a button or using the selection wheel before the screen is finished rendering,” said Sam Taylor, spokesman for the office of Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Yes, it's those stupid users' fault, of course.

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If a voting machine can in any way not register your vote because you clicked next prematurely, then I would say it is malfunctioning.

Such machines should have all the fences to make sure whatever stupid thing you might do, it should still recover and work as intended.

I think GP agrees with you and was being sarcastic

Right, because the spokesman for a state government office knows best when it comes to software UX design. Oh boy.

It's a basic unit test: if it's possible to lose inputs due to natural usage, the it's a bug.

Where I come from, data corruption is the worst severity of bug. If you see an input selection as data, this is clearly a data corruption severity.

I’m not someone who believes that you should be able to pitch manure, plan an invasion, and conn a ship. But someone can have standards for UX design without knowing about how to execute any of it. An employee of a procurement department certainly should be as part of their core competency. A spokesperson for a government procurement department should be able to communicate that if it is something the department values

Forgive me if I prematurely discount the UX opinions of a Gregg Abbott political appointee explaining that a laughably amateur user experience is the fault of the voters of the opposing party.

Oh we don't disagree on that. I'm saying that this appointee should be better at UX evaluation, not that we should take their opinion as worth anything.

"you're holding it wrong."

Speaking of the alleged problem as reported is not necessarily a comment on the UX, it can be simply a reporting of the problem.

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