These were deployed machines used in early voting. The amount of willingness to excuse incompetency here is unbelievable.
These were deployed machines used in early voting. The amount of willingness to excuse incompetency here is unbelievable.
> Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown addressed the issue in a statement, saying the machine was temporarily taken out of service while an investigator from the Attorney General's Office was called to inspect the machine. Investigators tried to recreate the anomaly and were able to do so after spending few minutes tapping in the area of the screen between the Trump and Harris field, Brown said.
> Despite additional attempts, Brown said investigators weren't able to recreate it a second time.
> "The Kentucky Attorney General’s Department of Criminal Investigations quickly responded to the complaint from Laurel County. Detectives have been in touch with the county clerk and recommended they change out the voting machine," Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said in a statement. "All Kentucky voters can have confidence that our elections are secure and any potential issues will be addressed quickly."
> In a statement Friday, officials from the Kentucky State Board of Elections said the voting machine registered the selection for Harris because the voter was touching two boxes simultaneously.
> Initially, the voter used their finger to "jab" the small box in the top-left corner of the Trump field on the touchscreen. After a few failed attempts, a second hand enters the frame and is seen attempting to "simultaneously click the large Trump field with an index finger and the large Robert F. Kennedy field with a thumb, leaving the Harris box highlighted," officials said.
> Michon Lindstrom, spokesperson for Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, also dismissed the incident as "voter error."
> Brown emphasized that the issue occurred on a ballot-marking machine, which does not process votes. Marking machines allow voters to make their selections for their ballot and then physically print them to be cast and counted.
> If the machine prints a faulty ballot, voters are able to discard it and print a corrected one, Brown said.
As someone not from the US: Why do you need that? What’s the advantage over manually filling out a piece of paper? The machine can’t use the data of printed ballots for anything if I can print multiple ballots, so it’s just a glorified pen making a checkmark?
As this shows, it still allows some user error, but they hope for less.
Is it safe to admit the voting machine UX sucks if this is remotely possible? These things should be designed so 90 year olds can use them without error - and without filing their fingertips down with little squares of sandpaper.