Are ES& S touch screens "pressure sensitive" or "heat sensitive" ?

[philb]

Many voters in Sarasota said that it was hard to get a vote for Jennings to "take"- to show on the review screen.

Are the ES&S touch screens "pressure sensitive" or "heat sensitive"?
What does one have to do to get the vote to register? why do some have problems?

Why in many races in many states was it hard to get a Dem candidate choice to take.
Many had to go back and do it again or punch or tap many times. what is going on here?


It is clear that many races TS machines have been programmed with a default (I could name many races where this was known to occur)
"default to candidate X" that counts if no vote or default is not successfully overridden
"default to blank" gives undervotes seen in places like Broward Fl and Mahoning Ohio in 2004

but its also easy to program compiler to switch or compile in any manner desired or switch to blank.
what mechanisms are people aware of?

How does one determine the mechanism used on machines in a questionable race like the one in Sarasota?


Its clear that the company(ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia) programmers have access to manipulate the votes virtually at will.
Why would anyone assume that they don't do it on a regular basis since there are no checks and balances, and there seems to have been little likelihood one would be caught and punished?
Likewise for SOE staff where they do the programming, apparently less common than companies.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Probably Not Temperature Sensitive

there are several technologies for touchscreens, each has different characteristics. Bottom line is that the manufacturer did not build them correctly - probably bad testing. For example, some technologies don't work as well with older people's skin - if they didn't test on older folks, they wouldn't know that there was a problem - until too late.

[papau]

3. did not build them correctly " still awaits the 50/50 split of who was helped by

the problem - except for the reports from Dallas 2002, the GOP seems to always benefit.

It does not sound random.

[Cronus Protagonist]

4. Usually they're capacitive or conductive

Drier, aged skin doesn't work well on either. If you lick your finger before touching, you get better results, as anyone with a membrane type computer mouse pad will attest. There are better technologies, but they're more expensive and often require more frequent calibration.

http://www.electronics-manufacturers.com/info/monitors-and-displays/touch-screen-monitor.html

A touch screen generally employs one of four types of touch technologies: capacitive, resistive, infrared, and surface acoustic wave (SAW). These are generally placed above either a CRT screen or LCD screen to provide the required interactive functionality in a single component composed of two parts. With the exception of the infrared method, each of these methods relies on a hard substrate into on onto which various signals and detecting devices are built. In general, capacitive and resistive touch technologies both rely on overlays, whereas infrared and SAW configurations typically do not require overlays. In a capacitive type of touch screen, a glass panel is coated with a conductive coating that is fused into the glass. The coating is connected to electrodes located at edges of the screen. Each electrode is connected to an oscillator circuit. When a user touches the screen, the body capacitance of the user causes a change in the impedance of the screen. The capacitive touch screen requires that the object contacting the display be at least partially electrically conductive so as to detect the contact. A human finger tip satisfies this requirement of capacitive type touch-screen displays. A resistive touch screen works by applying a voltage across a resistor network and measuring the change in resistance at a given point on the network where a screen is touched by an external source. Resistive touch screens are widely used in conventional CRTs and in flat-panel display devices in computers and in particular with portable computers. The IR technology employs an array of infrared (IR) light emitting diode (LED)/photodetector pairs mounted in a frame. In operation, the LED/photodetector array is continuously and sequentially scanned horizontally and then vertically. When a user touches the display breaking one or more of the light beams, the X-Y position of the touch can be transmitted to a controller or host computer. Today, most commercial acoustic touch screen systems employ surface acoustic waves (SAWs) as the acoustic mode propagating in a faceplate.

Resistive touch screens have a conductive coating deposited upon the substrate and a conductive, flexible cover sheet placed over the substrate that is indented by a stylus or finger to create an electrical connection between the conductive flexible cover and the conductive substrate. Resistive wire touch screens are built upon a substrate that is coated with a resistive film, typically indium tin oxide (ITO) at a specified thickness, uniformity and resistivity. The flexible cover sheet extends over the substrate except for a portion where electrical connections are made to the substrate. Electrical connections to touch screens are typically made by soldering a cable having a plurality of wires to the conductive face of the substrate in this exposed area. Resistive matrix-touch screens typically comprise a transparent plastic membrane that overlays a glass substrate. Too and bottom layers are patterned with parallel metal wires that are perpendicularly aligned to form a grid. Pressing on the top membrane forces the wires together to register a touch. Resistive analog touch screens are constructed like resistive matrix screens, but are not etched to define a wire grid. Instead, the entire surface acts as one large active area sensor. Touches are registered by measuring voltage dividers in the X and Y directions. In operation, a voltage is alternately applied along horizontal and vertical axes of the screen. When a user depresses the Mylar overlay so that its conductive layer contacts the energized layer, the resulting voltage is sensed and transmitted to a controller that converts the signal to an indication of touch location. There are three types of resistive touch screens, 4-wire, 5-wire, and 8-wire. The three types share similar structures. The main difference between 4-wire, 5-wire, and 8-wire touch screens is the circuit pattern in the lower circuit layer and the upper circuit layer, and the means for making resistance measurements. The two most popular resistive architectures use 4-wire or 5-wire configurations.

[philb]

5. Who voted on ES&S TS?? which of these sound like what you saw?

[texpatriot2004]

2. K & R for Transparent Democracy nm