The title to this headline should be changed:

NC: Carteret County – Train Wreck - Republican ballot in Carteret has glitch LINK

It should read - Carteret County - poll workers hand out wrong paper ballots to 40 republican voters.

This was not due to a printing error, nor to the optical scanner malfunctioning.

It was simply the poll worker not paying attention and handing out the wrong ballot.

“The last-minute nature of the entire process presented by ES&S has eroded voter confidence, unnecessarily, and will make our election procedure suspect,”

unnecessarily? Oh my - ROFL

"We're confident the votes are being tabulated correctly, but the reporting function" didn't operate as the company wanted."

What - it didn't switch the votes to Repugs? Too funny!

Stephen Colbert wrote this didn't he!
No?
I could have sworn it was him!

I cant wait for 06/06/06

"We're confident the votes are being tabulated correctly, but...."

Ahhhh shuddup.

We did everything right, it is the results that are wrong, not us.

That pattern of "reasoning" seems prevalent anywhere there is an electronic voting machine these daze.

Can somebody define the word, "glitch?"

Main Entry: glitch
Pronunciation: 'glich
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps from Yiddish glitsh slippery place, from glitshn (zikh) to slide, glide; akin to Old High German glItan to glide --- more at GLIDE
1 a : a usually minor malfunction [a glitch in a spacecraft's fuel cell]; also : 2BUG 2 b : a minor problem that causes a temporary setback : SNAG
2 : a false or spurious electronic signal

I think "slippery place" applies well and #2 "a false or spurious electronic signal" says it all in a nutshell!

Main Entry: spu·ri·ous
Pronunciation: 'spyur-E-&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin & Latin; Late Latin spurius false, from Latin, of illegitimate birth, from spurius, noun, bastard
1 : of illegitimate birth : BASTARD
2 : outwardly similar or corresponding to something without having its genuine qualities : FALSE
3 a : of falsified or erroneously attributed origin : FORGED b : of a deceitful nature or quality

#3 done by #1!

Shannon #5

It is a term, in general, used by those who are not software engineers.

In general software engineers will tend to use the term "bug" when talking about defects in coding logic. Defects that cause or lead to malfunctions.

The Diebold software has been scrutinized by professional software engineers and was found to be primitive in various aspects, and to contain bugs that only the most naive of engineers would do.

Software designed and developed by novice software engineers appears to be the brains behind the bulk of the machines we discuss here.

Some professionals have stated, and I concur, that the code is so bad it must be deliberate.

These bugs or glitches can be used to take over the machine when it fails.

A very famous bug of that sort was made famous by the book "The Cockoo's Egg" (link here).

This book is written so that non-programmers can read and understand it. It will rock your world to find out how a bug allowed a hacker to totally infest the defense establishment's computers, including the NSA.

Check it out at the library or borrow a copy ... it is a true story that will help you realize how very and utterly easy these machines are to hack.