something of the night - a little bit of politics

Voting machines work perfectly, except when it's not a low turn-out: Early voting in Florida suggests that the electronic machines are screwing up already:

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

So... the machines are great, unless people turn up to vote? Is it just us being picky, or does a polling system which can't match votes cast with what it's displaying - and then require a fifteen-step "fix" constitute a polling system which doesn't actually work?

Faith in the process: Leaving aside the question of if you can trust them, can you rely on Diebold to deliver the right result from next week's US midterms?

Probably not. They can't even get themselves straight when complaining about a film HBO have made about the accuracy of their voting machines. They've issued a highly detailed attack... on a completely different film.

But that's understandable: after all, complaining about VoterGate when you think you're complaining about Hacking Democracy isn't so very different from discovering you've voted for Bush when you thought you were voting for Kerry.