Calibration My Ass!

I'm gonna assume all the five or six posters I get here have read about the electronic touch screen voting machines in various States that seem to have a problem registering a Romney vote and instead record an Omama vote. One voter in the story here had to re-cast her vote on the touch screen several times before it correctly recorded a Romney vote. She was told it was a "calibration" problem. These machines were checked later by technical experts and found NOT to have any "calibration" problems. And my point is; calibration (and coding) is something that is done by humans. Read more here about the "calibration" issue.

Now I'm gonna make an assumption here that the touch screen operates something along the lines of an image map. An image map is something all of us have encountered on the web. You probably don't even know you've seen one when you have. What an image map actually is, is a graphic with selected areas that are graphed and mapped off into sections. The graph is then written into the webpage code. Click on one section of the image and it links to a website or page. Click on another section and you will get an entirely different result. And graphs CAN be manipulated to size and location. In other words they can be rigged to make it extremely difficult to click on the link (or candidate) you really want unless you are very exact and precise.

For a working example click here to see in image map and java applet I created on my other website and you'll get a very good idea of what one actually is. If you really want to get your inner Geek on, view the page source on the link I provided and see what the "coordinates" actually are on the webpage code. My best guess is coding and not "calibration" is the problem with these voting machines. BTW, internet Explorer may not display my image map correctly. If not, try viewing it in Firefox.

My point is; the machine "calibration" is in the mind of the beholder (and touch screen coder). "Calibration" can be twisted, tweaked, manipulated and skewed to make the link (or in this case selected candiate) easy or hard to click on. Machines DON'T "calibrate" themselves. The easiest and smartest thing to do is see who produces and actually does the coding used on these machines and where their political allegiance lies. Or to just put it simply - follow the money.