As someone not from the US I don't know why you need janky machines with dodgy UI and touchscreen calibration. Why not just a pencil, you get your slip, put an X in the box next to your candidate. Works fine everywhere else...
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2026
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It was an excuse for state legislators to give out no-bid contracts to companies they own stock in. It's that simple. That's the only reason they exist.
It worked fine here too until people realized it was another avenue for crooked income. The machines I once worked on stored data to pcmcia media. They worked fine. They didn't need to replace them, but they did anyhow. Because money.
Some places, all the places I've been, give you the option. The machines are typically for people with bad vision because it makes everything easier to see. At the end of the day the machine just prints to the bubble sheet anyway and then that sheet is read by another machine.
I posted this in the politics community They said don't be a conspiracy theorist and removed the post. Is that community a bunch of right wing simps?
Getting banned from the politics community is just a right of passage on Lemmy.
That's a big yikes. WSMV looks like a perfectly reasonable local news source based In Tennessee, and it's not even owned by Sinclair!
This looks like local tech issues and not an attempt to steal an election. But with how openly Republicans have been saying they're going to try something to ratfuck this election, and the amount of bullshit from LW politics mods, suppressing this story is not okay.
But with how openly Republicans have been saying they’re going to try something to ratfuck this election
You mean like this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/us/politics/justice-dept-alaska-senate-race-sullivan.html
Yeah. It's kinda odd how feds didn't get involved all those tines when it was a Republican intentionally trying to fuck with the Dem candidate.
They said don’t be a conspiracy theorist and removed the post.
Have you tried changing the headline from "Tennessee" to "North Korea" and just see if it slips under their radar?
Change Tennessee to California.
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TN voter here. The poll workers are aware and on point. I was given a warning delivered in a very neutral tone. "Because there are so many options and the options are narrow some people have been noticing when they try to select an option it chooses the one above. Make sure the tip of your finger touches the candidate you are choosing. Double check the candidate you want is selected as a grayed box. Triple check the candidate you chose is showing on the review page. Quadruple check the candidate you chose is printed on the slip before feeding it into the counting machine. Come to us if the printed slip does not show the candidate you chose and we'll spoil it and reset your vote." Poll workers are heros.
Quadruple check the candidate you chose is printed on the slip before feeding it into the counting machine.
Europoor here: I thought you guys had actually digitalized the process. This just sounds like ticking a box on a piece of paper with a pen with extra steps.
Note that every state can differ.
In my case, it is a pen and paper, scanned by machine.
I don't know if any state has gone full digital. That would preclude a manual recount, which I know is commonly a right of a candidate to request in a close result.
the conservative states, use voter mahcines much more pervasively than the non-conservative areas. paper ballots have always been more secure.
Well you can't rig it as easily if you fill in the bubble with a pen. Use your brain for a sec, duh. You europeans just don't GET us. /s
That's exactly what it is.
But you see this way the state has to buy billions of dollars of machines.
and who owns these machines, gop backe dcompanies.
I'm glad my state doesn't go in for this bullshit. Paper ballot filled out by hand.
That honestly sounds more like fucked up screen calibration than anything. If the machines are old as fuck, they likely still need that. People forget how shitty touchscreen tech used to be.
When it comes to republican election fuckery there are no coincidences.
There are other ways to mess with the counts that aren't going to be visible to the person as they make selections. Like having it show whatever they're selecting properly, then just printing different selections at the end. Not everyone is going to verify the printed copy shows what they selected, and already confirmed on the machine once.
Making it jump around on screen isn't discreet at all, and it's not the easiest way to try and interfere. Poorly calibrated touchscreens, and a user interface with inadequate spacing between options are much more likely reasons.
We're used to using devices that companies spend a lot of time designing the User Experience on. Voting machines are a very niche industry, with virtually no consumer backlash for a shitty experience because the voter has no direct control, and the government isn't going to be using that interface to handle things like counts at the end.
They are doing that too. They don't care about discreetness.
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So what makes this better than a pencil mark on paper?
Nothing. Americans getting ripped off by some company selling bullshit at the expense of their democratic legitimacy.
You can count the votes faster... but who cares about that when you can just take longer?
Likewise, electronic voting just introduces the doubt of legitimacy, even if voting is totally safe and legit.
Note that the paper ballots generally don't take longer to count, they are generally digitally scanned in the same way the printouts from the touchscreen machines are.
It might speed up voting as a tap is a little faster than filling a bubble, but then again a wide tip marker would fix that, but then you might spoil more ballots when people aren't sure if they mismarked it.
I guess but we still have pencils and teams of humans counting. I agree its the safest and easiest to audit.
Swapping a pen or marker could spoil a box if some funky ink is introduced.
Here in Sweden votes usually take about a week to finish counting, including re-checks and such. It's not so bad.
What is bad is that we're 40 days in and the government still hasn't been established. Useless pieces of shit.
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Just like in cars, can we have physical buttons back? Touch screens shouldn't be used for anything important.
And certainly not in cars.
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If someone from the past saw this they'd just assume humanity evolved into clowns. Which isn't even wrong.
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That face when even with rigging the machines they still loose.
I mean, you're really underselling the ability for these people to rig elections.
I would not be surprised to see a bunch of the Deep South states with heavily diverging exit polls and final results. Then we'll get an earful about polling being unreliable and an even bigger earful about how anyone doubting election results is a Russian PsyOp.
Bunch of loosers.
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Sow doubt and suspicion. Claim fraud, steal election. Martial law the riots, fascism.
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I see this all the time with touch screens. People float their finger over the screen and end up selecting something.
Same, on a plane I saw a man become very frustrated trying to play essentially the airlines version of MapTap as everytime he'd touch somewhere on the map it would show that he selected Antarctica and give him 0 points. And that's because his thumb/lower hand would always hit the bottom of the screen first and he never figured it out.
This bug will get fixed before the election. It's supposed to flip to the GOP candidate AFTER the submit button is pressed and without the voters knowledge.
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In Canada we don’t even use machines. Just mark an X and count the papers you rubes.
Literally. Elections is the one thing I don’t trust with digitalisation.
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I have two questions about this:
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Why do Americans use these machines? Just turn up at the polling station, confirm your name and address, get handed your ballot paper, mark it with an X, drop it in the box. Bish bash bosh.
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What the fuck is with that weird "news reporter voice" they always do on American news!? Just speak normally.
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Flubbed executions, panic banning Kratom over Facebook posts, broken voting systems. Tennessee is the new Mississippi.
the gop is completely driven by Social media algorhitims.
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