Thursday, January 17, 2008

Spooky election results

I thought I never wanted to hear another word about the New Hampshire primary. But this is about voting technology and accurate counts.

Apparently if you break out voting results by whether the ballots were computerized or counted by hand, you get mirror image results. That is, people who voted by computer? Clinton 53%, Obama 47%. By paper? Clinton 47%, Obama 53%.

This could be a freak coincidence, or the computers could be switching the votes. Both are possible.

Man, everyone needs to vote by filling out a piece of paper. Touchscreens are bullshit. I'm all for scantron counting the paper to speed up the process, because there's a physical document we can recheck if we don't trust the computer. (Not to mention random sampling to make sure in the first place.)