The U.S. general election officially kicked off. Voter enthusiasm is high this year, and the turnout rate is at a record high. It is estimated that there will be 150-160 million votes. Therefore, it may still take time to count votes, and the final result may not be announced on the day of the general election. During this period, will there be some unexpected situations? This article is from the WeChat official account: HyperAI super nervous (ID: HyperAI) , author: super nervous, the original title:” one hundred million A paper ballot and a scanner with frequent bugs will influence the US election? “, the title picture comes from: Visual China
The voting on election day of the 2020 US general election is officially launched. Polling stations in all states have been closed sequentially at 6 pm Eastern time on November 3, corresponding to 7 am on November 4th Beijing time.
On one side are two 70-year-old candidates running around, sprinting to canvass votes; on the other side, enthusiastic voters are gearing up to participate in this election battle.
The picture shows Google Doddle today, and provides Internet users with query tools to participate in voting
On the evening of previous election days, the ballot results will be announced. However, this year’s election has become more complicated due to the surge in the number of voters and the different deadlines for mailing voting.
At present, the general election has entered the formal balloting stage, and the votes of many “swing states” are still being counted…
The turnout rate has reached a new high, how to count 100 million paper votes
Before election day arrives, early voting has already begun in many places. According to the latest data, the states have received nearly 93.3 million early ballots, more than two-thirds of the total number of votes cast in the last election year. There are currently nearly 32 million mailed ballots that have not yet arrived at polling stations.
Most election experts believe that there will be 150-160 million votes in the US general election this year.
According to US media reports, more than half of voters choose to fill in paper ballots by hand, which will then be scanned and counted by an optical scanner. The rest of the voters will vote by machine.
The paper ballots mailed to the polling station need to be opened one by one by the staff
In other words, there are more than 100 million paper ballots that will be counted and counted in polling stations in various places. These hundreds of millions of paper ballots are huge enough in size alone, and it is a huge project to process these paper ballots one by one.
In order to speed up statistics, many states and counties have begun to use optical scanners to count votes in recent years.
In 2020, is it reliable to use answer sheets to elect the president?
As mentioned above, the current voting methods in the US general election are mainly paper ballots and electronic voting.
Electronic voting machines have always been questioned. It happened that Shadow, an unknown technology company, developed an app for counting votes for the Democratic Party of Iowa. Unexpectedly, a technical failure occurred on election night, which caused a delay of one week before checking the votes.
In addition to temporary failures, hackers, dataAccording to security and other reasons, it has also become the reason why electronic voting or mobile voting has not been implemented on a large scale.
So, paper voting is still considered the safest way to vote, so most voters still vote by paper voting.
The paper voting method is also more ceremonial
However, the first question raised by paper voting is: How to improve statistical efficiency? Optical scanners have become the preferred tool to solve this problem.
According to the analysis by the Pew Research Center (Pew Research Center), nearly half of the registered voters in the United States have adopted The optical scanner serves as the voting system.
In beige areas, optical scanners are used to count votes, accounting for more than half. In addition, there are electronic voting and manual counting.
Regions using optical scanners value the advantages of statistical speed and lower cost. But this method also has drawbacks.
Because the optical scanner is limited by the robustness of its algorithm, and the design is notA good and uncalibrated machine may inadvertently miscalculate or invalidate votes, thus leading to erroneous statistical results, which are not easy to detect.
This year’s paper voting card sample (subtle differences in different regions)
Optical scanners are usually based on the number of black and white pixels in the marked area(such as oval)(dark and light pixels ) to determine whether the mark is a vote. Generally speaking, the algorithm used by the system is sensitive to the shape of the mark and the black pixels.
However, staff at polling stations in various places have discovered hundreds of vulnerabilities in the optical scanning system. These vulnerabilities are usually caused by the following reasons:
Place the ballots upside down into the scanner; the scanner passes multiple ballots at the same time; the sensor is damaged, the paper jam or overheating, the printing and programming are inconsistent, programming errors, etc. Even the optical scanner with the highest adoption rate has been questioned.
The scene of “car accidents” in previous general elections: all are the pots of optical scanners
In the past elections, the votes were miscalculated due to errors in the optical scanner.
The 2000 presidential election: The optical scanner in Orange County, California, failed to count more than 400 ballots due to “unexplained reasons”; in Florida, tens of thousands of ballots were not counted due to scan failures, and there were approximately 31,775 voters ‘S ballots were ignored and not read;
2004 Presidential Election: Due to the law in Napa County, California, when 1% of the votes were manually audited, it was discovered that SequoiaSome of the ballot papers marked with gel ink had an error. The manufacturer said that these instruments can only read carbon ink, not other ink handwriting;
The ballot (ballot) is like an answer sheet, the candidate’s corresponding marked area is blacked out, and the scanner uses digital imaging technology to identify the mark
2008 Presidential Election: In the District of Columbia election, when the Sequoia Optical Scanner performed statistics, a faulty ink cartridge caused the ballot results to be copied into multiple elections.
Of course, in some cases, scanners can’t be blamed entirely. Voters themselves can also cause some miscalculations.
Some voters did not read the instructions carefully when voting, and the operation was not standardized. For example, the marked area should be blacked out, but they were painted as stars, circles or crosses. Some people even tried to modify them with tape or other means after filling in the wrong. , These all lead to the “answer” cannot be correctly identified and read.
But in any case, these errors have brought into question the credibility of optical scanners. Manufacturers are naturally to blame, but things are not that simple.
Manufacturer: The machine is ok, no investigation is accepted
After the 2008 general election, Sequoia, the manufacturer of the optical scanner in question, said in response to information about miscalculation of votes: “In the data or internal event logs, no evidence was found to be able to cause or contribute to the The unusual or irregular behavior of the problem.”
Sequoia subsequently issued a report that attributed the problem to human error, ruled out the possibility of hardware and software failures, and claimed that the company had no way to track the scanning machine’s problems.
The District of Columbia Council finally decided to require Sequoia to submit the source code of the voting system for a more thorough investigation.Shan Company objected to this.
Sequoia denies the connection in its response to the optical scanner error report
In the end, Sequoia blamed the error on the problem of uploading information from a single cartridge. The District of Columbia Council stated that accidental errors and abnormalities are inevitable. When these problems arise in the future, the best way is to conduct careful, open and independent investigations, and adopt new agreements to ensure that no greater failures occur in the future. .
Other manufacturers of optical scanners also made mistakes. Although Diebold was under investigation, it refused to publish the results, calling it proprietary information.
From this point of view, the path to the source of the problem of optical scanners can be described as numerous obstacles. In this year’s general election, I wonder if these devices face 100 million paper votes. Will there be any bugs?
Don’t know what surprises this year’s election will bring?
News source:https://venturebeat.com /2020/11/01/optical-scanning-machines-are-susceptible-to-miscounting-u-s-voter-ballots/
This article is from WeChat official account:HyperAI (ID: HyperAI), author: super nerve