Spyke

Syndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.

View original on lemmy.world

New voting machines fix your vote if you accidentally select the wrong candidate.

Reports of this happening in Tennessee. https://www.wsmv.com/2026/10/21/early-voting-concerns-were-brought-head-tennessee-elections-heres-what-he-said/

I bet lots of these electronic voting machines have been upgraded to automatically fix votes accidentally cast for the wrong candidate.

modified clip from Tim and Eric Awesome Show. Great Job.

View original on lemmy.world
571

53 replies

lemmy.zip

AI powered voting machines made by Tesla bought by doge

100
lemmy.world

Anyone who still believes that the U.S. is a democracy should educate themselves.

61
lemmy.world

Anyone who still believes that the U.S. is a democracy should can't educate themselves, **or be educated by others.

30
DandomRudereply
lemmy.world

I'm afraid you completely misunderstand what dictatorship means. The U.S. has been an oligarchy for a long time, because the citizens have allowed it and continue to do so to this day. Now, as a logical consequence, the screws are being tightened. If there were still one last chance, resistance would be called for right now. But since that isn't happening, it will come down to what you're already mistakenly assuming.

I’m sorry to have to say this, but the current situation is only the beginning.

11

Where exactly did I display a misunderstanding of dictatorship? I agree with your general point, but your patronizing tone over red herrings gets a downvote. Bad faith.

12

I thought it was because you guys have a pathetic system that was easily subverted?

There seemed to be a few moments where he was almost impeached and removed; but every time the answer to "wait, you can do that?" was "yes, and apparently without consequences." Your checks and balances amounted to empty threats and warnings, as he bunt down everything around him.

Try the same shit in any country with a prime minister and they'd be torn apart and on the street by a month. It shouldn't be the average citizen's problem to enforce the laws of your own country on your president. Therefore I don't think the blame rests with them either.

1
nord.pub

It's so infuriating American's seem to be lost in the woods. "It's totally fine, we have checks and balances, the system can't be subverted".

6

Now we get to say we told you so until they pick us off one by one

3

Not futuristic enough. Besides, they know how to rig those kind of ballots too. I refer you to the "hanging chad" fiasco in Florida circa 2000.

18

its been like this for 2 decades, simpson writers/creators knew it was going on, but it never reaches the news.

2
lemmy.world

So there is the selection machine that prints a ballot paper, and a scanner that actually counts the vote. If the selection machine does such a shit, you should test the scanner, too.

And the odd thing is that all reports mention switching of the vote from DEM to REP, but none in the other direction...

33
JcbAzPxreply
lemmy.world

Literally every time there are "errors" with voting, it's always somehow in the republicans' favor. Strange that....

12
lemmy.today

everyone balked at the idea that mitch mcconnels last senate election wasnt like that either.

5

Dems doing the "let's uphold decorum, as the good guys", broader libs doing the "thank goodness nothing is seriously wrong, otherwise good guys would be really upset!"

And we plod foot after foot after foot...

2
stankmutreply
lemmy.world

It's possible that the layout of the ballot makes it more likely for the votes to switch in a certain direction. Especially since it sounds like they are using resistive touch screens. If the Republican option was on top and the Democratic option was right beneath it and if people are more likely to hit towards the top of the option, a poorly calibrated touch screen could cause votes to swap (initially selecting the Democrat and then the screen gets confused depending on how the pressure changes as you take your finger off and then selects the Republican above it). These kinds of errors were fairly common when resistive touch screens were the norm.

Then the technician comes out, hits firmly in the middle of the field, sees no problems, and calls it a user error.

In Texas, they used a machine with a kind of joystick to select between the options. And those had a tendency of overshooting the center when you let go of it, so the selector would go back up as you were reaching to hit the next screen button. They put incumbents at the top, so it was more common for people to see it swap from Democrat to Republican than the other way around.

It shouldn't be acceptable to run elections with machines that have these problems, but there's no real incentive to fix it.

13
nord.pub

I get what you're saying but that doesn't sound at all like what people are describing.

Like maybe you'd fumble a button once but when you have another go and are determined to get it right?

9
stankmutreply
lemmy.world

Sometimes people just do the exact same thing over and over. I've seen this a few times. Some app I was working on had a bug where if you touched the icon on the dropdown menu, it wouldn't work. Anywhere else would work. No one noticed until a support ticket came in where this one person complained about being unable to move past that screen. They were just mashing the icon over and over.

2
nord.pub

That doesn't sound analogous at all.

Someone thought an icon was a button.

That's not the same as someone pressing a democrat button, aparently successfully, and then seeing their vote had flipped to republican.

Especially in a UI which has the sole explicit purpose of enabling a user to accurately select either Republican or Democrat.

3

My point was that not everybody tries different things. We'd never gotten a complaint before because every other person would try to tap a different part of the button (it was a fairly large button that took up 90% of the width of the screen). I just picked a example that was top of mind, but I've seen this in a lot of different contexts involving technology. I've had to help people with resistive touchscreen after watching them jab at the same place over and over.

The UI should have the sole purpose of enabling a user to accurately select a candidate, but they aren't actually made that way. The county in question even provides sticks to help make selections more accurately, so it's apparently been an issue with their machines for years.

2
lemmy.world

They always manage to put the republican in the position these errors favor

7

or the fact that we never see the results when it goes into the scanner to be counted, it just says you voted.

2

Oh I'm sure we'll institute such a check after this election cycle and we find out that somehow the scanners were malfunctioning as well. But only after it's too late to change the outcome.

12
lemmy.world

They also write propositions in confusing language so the voter doesnt exactly know if they should vote yes or no. Do you want to vote against not raising taxes on securities, house properties, including investment housing, and after death bequeathments?

7

they do that in alot of areas beside red too. the past few elections all propositions, you cant tell if they are for or against the prop, if you voting yes/no on it. i think there is a recent one where someone wrote that a prop will give billions to a research center own with 3 employees in california, nothing suspicious about that.

5

Super not confusing for your districts voters who are primarily 70+ year olds who probably can't see very well anymore. Nothing suspicious about it. It a butterfly ballot, who hates butterflies? Everyone loves butterflies? Are you some kind of butterfly hating Cuban?

4

Oh god, I was relieved when it saw it was a shitpost, then I saw the link in the description 😩 fuck these fascists, man...

Edit: read the article and they say it's just a technical error that got caught and fixed. Says they sent a technician from each party to check the machines

10
lemmy.world

Not to be a debbie downer, but I don't trust Republicans checking those machines when it was benefitting them in the first place

4

the companies that own the machines all have ties to the gop, if not owned by some of them. thats why you dont see them in deep blue states as much.

4

read the article and they say it’s just a technical error that got caught and fixed. Says they sent a technician from each party to check the machines

Yeah so was the "hanging chad" issue during the 2000 election. They only fixed that technical error after Bush became president.

4

and the 2024, wasnt suspicious enough? so many blue counties suddenly switched to red all of the sudden, they immediately stopped the count in the states trumps was leading.

6

Do any have AI so I don't need to even feel embarrassed about making the wrong selection in the first place??

13

God, don't encourage them to do that. I know they're already trying to do something sinister as fuck like that.

5

Thank god it will autocorrect my choice to the better suited candidate, the one who bought and cheated the election. I really didn't want to vote for the lesser evil.

8

Reminds me of the voting machine in Postal 4 how it will change who you vote for.

6

Okay. I'm going to need the name of your boat.

This skit had me dying the first time I saw it.

5
lemmy.ml

LMBO falling for the theatrics again. "Voting" and "Democracy" were already illusions

-28
TrickDacyreply
lemmy.world

ass.

Good job trying to help Republicans though. Nobody knows you're doing it because you're so smooth about it. I'm sure you're some kind of anarcho-socio-communist or something. Yay you.

9
reptarreply
lemmy.world

TD, I like the cut out your jib. I don't care what they say about you

2