What to do with the voting machines

Spacedog

Well, now that the voting machines are complete garbage, what should be done with them? sell them to Irish pubs, donate them to hacker nerds to disect them and harvest parts? leave them out on O'Connel Street with a load of baseball bats so that we can work out our troubles and frustrations by smashing the things to pieces (like the printer in office space)

A small note on their design, they worked by sending votes to a single centralised microsoft access database file (.mdb) which could be simply be edited by the operator to show any result they liked. the software on the machines was proprietary and not open to public scrutiny and an independent audit was resisted by the FF government who referred to the idea as unnecessary.

The company who made this machines, based in the Netherlands also had a contract to provide machines in that country, but it was quickly found that the machines were flawed and not fit for purpose.

Anyway, I'm all up for the smashing idea, who's with me?

minidazzler

Recycle them.

smash

I never realised they sent the info to an access bd. What a fkn joke.

We should blast them with piss and then kill them with fire!

chin_grin

Get them to work in Tesco I say. Or deport them to votingmachinaria. Damn voting machines. Dey dook der deeeeeebs.

Standard Toaster

We should use them to vote what should be done with them of course.

MidlandsM

I vote we..................ohhhh, never mind.

DoesNotCompute

Blast 'em with piss.

Dotrel

Gut them and install MAME.

mikemac1

Use them for EU referendum

Doesn't matter which way we vote, we'll be told what to do

Vote yes for jobs

maxfresh

turn them into time machines

SeaFields

have a tribunal

CardBordWindow

I thought they were deemed un-usable as they would not accept Atari Jaguar as a voting option?

Mr Magners

If they were deemed unfit for purpose why did the manufacturer not have to take them back?

darragh o meara

What I cannot understand is that these machines would presumably have a PC like setup albeit an old setup now! Why couldnt they have gotten a new software package and implement it on these machines???

Id take one though. Im sure theyll be worth a few quid in a few years ( a good few years:) )

Standard Toaster

Put them in a barn along with that Millenium Clock from the Liffey.
We're good at storing expensive wastes of public money in barns.

Inverse to the power of one!

Place them in Irish pubs around the world to display the sheer incomprehensible scale of our governments incompetence.......maybe someone will nuke us out of sympathy.

ronan45

Sell them to Mugabi :rolleyes:


Where is the Voting Machine Factory anyway? Anyone got any pics of these Mythical Machines?

Jim_Kiy

Sell them to North Korea.

Benny_Cake

darragh o meara wrote: »

What I cannot understand is that these machines would presumably have a PC like setup albeit an old setup now! Why couldnt they have gotten a new software package and implement it on these machines???

Id take one though. Im sure theyll be worth a few quid in a few years ( a good few years:) )

Apparently the processor they use is a Motorola 68000,which is the same processor used on the first generation Amiga. So you'd be limited in what you could do with them.

Duggy747

Convert them into jukeboxes / Who Wants To Be A Millionare machines and sell them off.

Vote for the next track and all that :pac:

OldGoat

Code in a looping paradox and watch as they become sentient but insane. Then we go to war with the megalomaniac government overthrowing overlord machines because war is always good for the economy.
We could be solvent this time next year. Bring on the coke & hookers.

ronan45

Benny_Cake wrote: »

Apparently the processor they use is a Motorola 68000,which is the same processor used on the first generation Amiga. So you'd be limited in what you could do with them.

Sensible Soccer anyone?

Voted 92% By Amiga Power!

Orando Broom

What do they look like? Any one got a picture of them?

mailforkev

Put a couple of them in a prominent position and set up a camera/webstream to give us a laugh at people getting confused thinking they are ATMs.

Stick XBMC or something on the others and watch some free movies.

working fool

Convert them Into suicide booths

Spacedog

Mr Magners wrote: »

If they were deemed unfit for purpose why did the manufacturer not have to take them back?

You're forgetting the first rule of acquisition:

"Once you have their money ... never give it back."

seriously though, I think the government signed a contract with the company, not only to protect their interests, but also to secure the proprietary technology used in the machines from prying eyes. e.g. to protect the systems running in other countries, security by secrecy methodology. This is why the machines are being stored in expensively secured warehouses despite them being obsolete junk.

...and all because scumbag Bertie didn't want to be laughed at for using his "stupa' pencil"

AnonoBoy

Turn them into Pacman machines.

Or, failing that, Ms. Pacman machines.

The Snipe

Orando Broom wrote: »

What do they look like? Any one got a picture of them?

ronan45

XiledSniper wrote: »

They look like over Size Spectrums from 1982:eek:
And where are these bad boys stored? I actually want to go see them for myself. I dont belive we could be still storing these its a myth. it HAS to be a myth........isnt it......

Mad Mike

I don't accept this notion that they have no value. I would have thought that the allegations that this type of voting can be fiddled would make these machines very attractive to lot of governments.

working fool

XiledSniper wrote: »

Orando Broom wrote: »

What do they look like? Any one got a picture of them?

Looks like a golf ????

Tiddlypeeps

Benny_Cake wrote: »

Apparently the processor they use is a Motorola 68000,which is the same processor used on the first generation Amiga. So you'd be limited in what you could do with them.

This doesn't explain why they can't just put new software on them that isn't retarded. The 68k processor is well capable of looking after the simple task of receiving and storing votes.

LumpyGravy

In case they change their minds:

http://www.electronicvoting.ie/english/index.html

darragh o meara

Mad Mike wrote: »

I don't accept this notion that they have no value. I would have thought that the allegations that this type of voting can be fiddled would make these machines very attractive to lot of governments.

Would have been handy for the lisbon vote. They would have saved a fortune that they spent re-running the vote

dxhound2005

darragh o meara wrote: »

Would have been handy for the lisbon vote. They would have saved a fortune that they spent re-running the vote

They should have kept them for all elections. Think of the amount of money which would be saved from not having to pay thousands of people to count the votes.

Orando Broom

XiledSniper wrote: »

That's some Blake's 7 ass shít right there!

flutered

Mad Mike wrote: »

I don't accept this notion that they have no value. I would have thought that the allegations that this type of voting can be fiddled would make these machines very attractive to lot of governments.

which is the reason that they were bought in the first place.

alphabeat

Mad Mike wrote: »

I don't accept this notion that they have no value. I would have thought that the allegations that this type of voting can be fiddled would make these machines very attractive to lot of governments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDbHwz6JGzo

Jim_Kiy

What about selling them to North Korea?

Littlehorny

They should be loaded into lorries and dumped on the driveway in front of Noel Dempseys house and he should be told "right these fuc*king things have cost US enough money, so they are YOUR problem now!".

Capt'n Midnight

if you change the program they can just about play chess (badly)
http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/images/9/91/Es3b-en.pdf

As we took it apart, we confirmed that this was
indeed a system built around a 68000 processor that came with 256kBytes of EPROM, 8 kBytes of
EEPROM, 16 kBytes of RAM, two 6850-based serial ports, a printer port, two screens (4 lines of
40 characters on the voter display, 2 lines of 40 characters on the small election official console)
attached to a cable.

They are dumber than any mobile phone that could fit in your pocket.


Access was not on the machines, it was on a separate PC and used to collate the results from the machines. Metasploit anyone ?
http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/ISSUE23/I23P4.pdf

3 The chosen system: software
The Voting Machine software, written in ANSI C,
runs on the PRU as well as the Voting Machine.
The “Integrated Election Software” (IES) runs
on a “hardened” PC running Microsoft Windows
2000. Written in Delphi, Borland’s Object Pascal,
IES consists of modules for STV counting, election
management, and management of the PRU. In addition,
IES uses several third-party tools and libraries,
including the Microsoft Access database system.
The Voting Machine software comprises some
25,000 lines of code, while IES approaches 100,000
lines, of which some 40,000 lines are devoted to the
counting module ([1] Part 3.2).

DEFTLEFTHAND

Why does it cost so much to store them? I have a few sheds available to me which are lying idle at the moment. They can send them down to me and I'll store them for free. That will be my patriotic duty done then, all I'd ask for in return would be a state funeral and my face printed on the new Punt bank notes.