Nov 14, 2018
Craig is on at the WGAN Morning News with Ken and Matt as they discuss how safe our states' voting system is.
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Transcript:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
Airing date: 11/14/2018
How safe is your State’s voting system? We compare New England voting technology with Florida’s and come up with some recommendations.
Unknown 0:00
All things technology tech guru Craig Peterson is on right now. On
the WGAN Morning News with Ken
and Matt.
Unknown 0:18
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customer for life. With all that said, It's time now to turn our
attention to Craig Peterson, our tech guru who joins us now as he
typically does. Craig, how are you?
Unknown 1:05
Hey, good morning doing well. I'm down in Orlando. In fact right
now,
Unknown 1:10
but maybe you could help them do the spouse and Broward County.
What do you think about that?
Unknown 1:16
Yeah, exactly. So I was down in the swamp of stuff going on Elmer
the land or stuff going on. It presents really kind of an
interesting problem. And although there is obviously political
implications and opinions on both sides, what seems to be happening
right now is frankly, it's kind of a result of the hanging chads,
you remember that back in 2000 I named al gore Yeah, exactly. And,
and the problem back then really was that Florida was not using
current technology because Chad's were part of punch cards, right.
And, and that's technology, frankly, out of the 1800s very old
technology. And by the year 2000, we had a lot better technology.
Well, we're seeing that again, gentlemen. And what we're seeing is
that these two counties that are having problems are using the
equipment that they bought in 2002, after the federal government
came out with a grant. Now, you know, I said forever, you can't
have non technology, people making technology decisions, right?
It's, you know, it's just such a complex topic, and particularly
talking about these voting machines. So the voting machines they
bought in 2002 don't hold up well, in humid conditions, guess what
they have in Florida, you meditate, and they can only score one
race at a time. Which means if you are trying to, for instance,
look at the governor's race, you have to run a all of the ballots
through the machines for the governor's race. And now we need to
score the senate race. So now you got to run all those ballots
through the machines, again, for the Senate, race, etc, etc. And
down here in Florida, there's another race that really matters. And
that race is the agriculture commissioner. I think that's the
title. But in that case, obviously, Florida, a lot of agriculture,
but the agriculture commissioner is the person who makes the
decisions about concealed carry permits down in Florida. So the
republicans are all up in arms with that. So here you go, you've
got what is a 13 machines, you have to run all 250 ish thousand
ballots through these machines multiple times, the machines don't
like the humidity that's in the air down here. So they're jamming
and just drawing balance. When they jam, it is a complete mess. And
then on top of it, you seem to have a woman in charge of it, at
least in Broward County, who doesn't seem to really know what she's
doing. It's really a crazy thing
Unknown 4:13
that's putting it mildly. We're talking to Craig Peterson, our tech
guru who joins us now to go over the world of Well, I guess the
election technology would be the best place to start, since that's
really dominated the news right now, you've of course, been talking
to us about these machines in Florida. What would be a good option?
I mean, I don't know how much you know about election machinery and
the kind of ballot boxes they have, or whatnot. But you know, here
in Maine, we have sort of, you know, we have a paper ballot, that
we fill out the oval with, you know, with a pen, and then it gets
run through a tabulating machine. And we have, like, the physical
we have the physical thing, it's not connected to the internet
early so says, Matt Dunlap. So it seems like we do things
reasonably smartly here. What's the best system in your mind?
Unknown 4:59
Yeah, frankly, that is the best system, you know, whether or not
the software safe, reliable, etc, is a completely different story.
But that system allows for a real manual recount. In other words,
you filled out those bubbles, right? You took some felt pen, right,
and fill those in. That is something that a human to look at,
right, you can, you can pull those ballots out. So the right way to
do this is people fill out the ballot, the run through the
machines, the machines come up with the tally. And then what you do
is you spot checks, machines, spotcheck for one race or two races
are all of the races and make sure everything is as it should be.
Now, there will be a little bit of discrepancy because a human I
might be able to determine intent better than an on him and I
because some people instead of filling in that oval will, right,
yes, and the machine's not going to understand that and they seize
the assets spits out the ballot, and in those cases, those ballots
can be looked at manually. Many states are using absolutely insane
stuff. They've got Windows XP running a touchscreen. And in a lot
of cases, in this election cycle, we've seen voters complaining
that they tried to vote for someone and another person on the
ballot was actually voted for so. So you
Unknown 6:32
aren't Craig, what's the argument for doing it that way? I mean,
when I was in Virginia, we had an all digital machine ballot, and I
voted that way. And it went smoothly for me. But I don't understand
why you would do it that way. Is it really just to save like, on
printing costs? I mean,
Unknown 6:46
it's
Unknown 6:48
Yeah, yeah, for accounting, I mean, what is it?
Unknown 6:52
Yeah, it is. The argument for that is that if you're trying to have
5 million people casting votes, it's much easier to have those
voting machines where everything is calculated automatically. Some
of the voting machines like that do have an audit trail, that they
spit out a piece of paper, most of them, frankly, don't have a good
audit trail, and there's no way to manually recount them. So it's
insanity. We, you know, and you already know, we do not have any
national elections, we have 58 elections, and the states typically
leave it up to the counties to perform the voting. So we've got
thousands of different jurisdictions that are in charge of voting.
So they're going to choose different machines, different versions
of those machines, they're going to try and update the software on
them. Some of these machines are a little on the complex side,
although they're getting simpler for the people working, not the
polls, but working the election, the secretaries of states and
things. So it's a this is a problem, this going to continue on. And
last, everybody switches to what main de because I know New
Hampshire uses a similar system. In fact, I think it's the same
system throughout New England, we have a lot of those, and they're
moving around the country. But that's the only way to do it. And
then, of course, the other part that's a real problem right now in
Florida has to do with people seeing what's happening. The light of
day is the best disinfectant. And when you're talking about having
the physical balance, like our us here in Maine, it's fantastic
because everyone can look at them. You can have multiple people who
are monitoring all at the same time, and they're not letting people
in to monitor the balance to monitor the accounts or anything else.
So that's the political side of it. Right? I personally think
that's absolutely insane thing. Let people in light of day make it
so they can be hand counted. And I think everything gets a lot
better quickly.
Unknown 9:00
We are going to Craig Peterson Tech Talk. He joins us on Wednesday.
738 let's talk about a little fake news. Um, how easy is it to
create fake news Craig
Unknown 9:14
I know this is really an interesting case because we now have the
technology where we can put a person's face on to someone else so
let's say you wanted to show someone committing a crime all you
have to do is have an actor some sort go ahead commit the crime all
fake you know and then the computers can now monitor everything
that's going on track the whole thing map it and put someone else's
face on makes a body look similar. It's absolutely crazy you guys
remember Lord of the Rings? The movie series? Of course, of course.
And did you ever see the behind the scenes the videos of how they
did this with Gollum and he had those white golf balls all over him
think
Unknown 10:07
that that's how you used to have to do it today You don't have to
do it that way at all. So when you're talking about fake news is
that extends all the way out to the video world that frankly some
of these videos that you're looking at are fake. In fact, one of
the videos on Facebook that got millions of views showed this jet
airliner just a passenger plane doing loops and slips just before
it landed and it was shared like crazy it was absolutely fake
there's no way that jet could do what was being shown and yet it
went out to millions of people who believe it happened so we're
going to have to be very prudent consumers of news as we go forward
because it's so easy to fake right it's easy now fake email
addresses this easy to fake phone numbers how many times a day you
get a call from one of these spam pies right trying to sell you
something or they're from the IRS right lately it's been for me
it's been insurance and by car insurance but it's it's so fake and
it's something we just got to be aware of. Be careful you really
can't believe your eyes anymore.
Unknown 11:26
No, you cannot well, Craig Peterson our tech guru, leaving us with
that bit of hope and optimism. Appreciate a Craig we will talk to
you again next week.
Unknown 11:34
Take care guys. Bye bye.
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