Why voting machines still suck [View all]
Government is up to its neck in tech. From IRS computers calculating taxes to computerized parking meter systems all the way to modern weapons systems, government at every level is utterly tangled up in computing.
It's always easy to criticize government as being overly bureaucratic or adorned with enough red tape to make a million dresses for Lady Gaga. But the fact of the matter is that governments tend to make extremely good use of technology when it suits them -- such as spying on their own citizenry or developing missiles that can travel hundreds of miles and hit a shoebox -- and become abominations when it doesn't.
For an example of the latter, look no further than the state of voting machines in the United States. Yes, after years of outrage and legal challenges, there are still problems -- big ones.
Lapses persist everywhere, from systems that can be compromised by someone with an eighth-grade education and $26 to voting machines that helpfully hack themselves. Just about everyone who's ever used a voting machine that lacks a paper receipt gets the bitter joke: Without the paper trail, how can you have manual recounts? Heck, even elections in Venezuela have that.
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/why-voting-machines-still-suck-192988
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