Electronic voting machines running into trouble

Hal Hodson, technology reporter

Millions of voters are flocking to the polls today across the US, but those who cast their ballots at one electronic voting machine in Pennsylvania faced a challenge if they tried to vote for Barack Obama.

A video showing a voting machine preventing a voter from choosing Barack Obama, ticking the box next Mitt Romney's name instead, was posted on Reddit earlier today. MSNBC subsequently confirmed the veracity of the video, and reported that the offending machine had been removed.

Such an obvious glitch is likely to be a technical problem, rather than voter fraud. However, the Pennsylvania case isn't the only hiccup: a similar fault has been reported in North Carolina as well.

Reddit user "centralpavote", who shot the video, recounted his discovery on the online forum:

My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.

I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney.

Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.

I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said 'It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK', and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/254d3acd/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A120C110Celectronic0Evoting0Emachines0Erun0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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