jgo writes "Johns Hopkins Computer Science professor Avi Rubin, posted his experience as an election judge on his website. It's an interesting read and exposes some potential security problems with electronic voting. At one point he held in his hand the five memory cards containing all of his precinct's votes." Rubin had posted his experience in the primary election earlier.

deus_X_machina writes "The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that a computer error involving one voting-machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, says the cartridge was retested yesterday and there were no problems. He couldn't explain why the computer reader malfunctioned."

FlopEJoe writes "There are many web-based electoral maps available on the regular news sites (Electorial-vote, CNN) but this image 3d county results seemed more profound to me. Wish I had more to say about it but I don't want to cloud the discussion. I think it speaks for itself and the spin-masters should enjoy it."

ctnp writes "While it wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome, 4530 votes were lost in one North Carolina county after one machine was configured to store 3,005 votes instead of the expected 10,500. 'The machines flash a warning message when there is no more room for storing ballots. 'Evidently, this message was either ignored or overlooked,' he [Jack Gerbel, CEO of machine-providing UniLect] wrote.'"

aacool writes "Blackboxvoting.org has raised the largest Freedom of Information request in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips."

WilliamGeorge points to this MSNBC story "that presidential candidate John Kerry has called George W Bush to concede the election. So it is over, and without a lot of extra fuss and recounts."

phoneboy writes "According to this news story on Voxilla.com, a number of VoIP service providers have experienced higher-than-normal call volumes today. The calls were traced to mostly Democratic volunteers making calls in key battleground states."

An anonymous reader writes "Electoral-vote.com (and mirrors electoral-vote2.com through electoral-vote8.com) seem to be very slow at the moment. Votemaster ( A. Tanenbaum) just posted 'All the servers appear to be under attack now, also DNS. I added another large multiprocessor but it doesn't seem to help much. I don't this is going to work. Sorry.' Massive attack or just a large flash crowd? Anybody up for some mirroring so votemaster can concentrate on the polls?" Reader fishwack writes with word that as of 3:46GMT (10:46 PM Eastern time in the U.S.) "the Federal Electoral Commission's Web site is down."

wetdogjp asks: "October 26th, 2004 marked the third anniversary of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (or USA PATRIOT Act, as it is more commonly known). While the Slashdot crowd can certainly muster the enthusiasm to debate its pro's and con's, I'd like to know: How has the USA PATRIOT Act affected you, personally? How has it interfered with your personal and professional life? Has this act influenced your Presidential vote?"

cmdr_beeftaco writes "Slate is running an ongoing commentary with the raw exit-poll data from the National Election Pool consortium owned by the Associated Press and the five television networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CNN) to their news divisions and to the newsrooms of NEP subscribers-big city newspapers and other broadcasters. 'The paid users of exit-poll data have signed a blood oath not to divulge it to unauthorized eyes, and the networks have promised not to call any states before their polls close. Slate believes its readers should know as much about the unfolding election as the anchors and other journalists, so given the proviso that the early numbers are no more conclusive than the midpoint score of a baseball game, we're publishing the exit-poll numbers as we receive them.'"

cmason32 writes "An optical voting machine memory card failed earlier today in Daytona Beach, Florida, sending election officials scrambling to secure the 13,000 paper receipts. Without the paper ballots, all 13,000 votes would have been lost. Considering how close some predict this election to be, losing that many ballots would be catastrophic. Let's hope that we won't see any more of this in the next 24 hours, and that these problems are fixed before 2006."

With the polls now already open in most of the country, this is the official on-topic place for all Slashdot readers to discuss the election itself. And get out and vote if you can. Also, if you haven't noticed, the Slashdot poll shows once and for all where Slashdot readers fall on the election. I'm off to vote in a couple hours. Wonder if we'll have Diebolds in my district.

shahman wonders: "I'll be on the road all day this election day, so the only access I'll have is through my PDA/Phone. I was wondering if any Slashdot readers know of WAP-enabled services or low-bandwidth sites that are providing (semi) real-time election coverage?" Nobbin has a similar, but less bandwidth-restrictive question: "I was wondering where I could find live results for the coming U.S. election, online. I live in Australia so I can't get them through watching CNN and so forth. I'm looking for something similar to the Austalian Electoral Commission's virtual tally room. So far, Google hasn't turned up much."

With the US Presidential Election getting started tomorrow, this story is your official chance to discuss the issues of the election with other Slashdot readers. And no matter what you decide, if you can, just get out and vote tomorrow.

Zogby released a poll yesterday that showed the ill-counted mobile-phone-only voters heavily in favor of Kerry over Bush. It should be noted that all participants opted in to the survey through a site run by Democrats, making the results non-random and therefore highly suspect. Further, the results tracked very closely ("virtually identical") to other polls run of the same age group, which means that if the results are to be trusted, mobile-only users in this age group are not any different from other voters in this age group, and their exclusion from those other polls is insignificant.

A reader writes: " www.electoral-vote.com, a site of daily updated maps of the US electoral college based on a number of polls is probably a site that the policially inclined check daily. Well, it has been revealed that the person behind the site, AKA the votemaster, is none other than Andrew Tanenbaum, noted author of numerous CS books." He's also known for a little discussion with someone named Linus Torvalds.

Johnny Fusion writes "American Graffiti has found an interesting way to plaster political messages across large buildings and doing no damage. They use light. The website is a little vague on the technology involved. The front page refers to the projection as a "light board", and the press release says they use high-powered digital projectors. The end result is a 40' x 120' billboard of light that is even less permanent than a bicycle spraying chalk messages. Despite the name, George Lucas has nothing to do with it, so you can be assured that the slogans will not be retroactively changed after the election."

Puny Human Nick writes "As mentioned before, the last home game the Redskins play before the election has predicted who will win since 1944. Well, the Redskins v. Green Bay game ended a few hours ago and it looks as though Kerry is going to win on Tuesday."

elhaf writes "There is an article running in the Chronicle on Higher Education about the new trend of creating political-message video games for the next round of campaigns. TechNews has commentary on the situation as well. The article mentions that there are actually a few available already, but they mainly just allow opposition-bashing. This is not, I think, to be confused with Serious games, even though both groups seem interested in health care policy."

phr1 writes "The Albuquerque Journal reports yet more hassles with electronic voting machines. Early voters pressing the Kerry button have repeatedly found the machine instead putting a check mark next to 'Bush'. The operators of course say it's the voters' fault. It would be just too unfortunate if the machines happened to systematically favor one candidate over the other, heh, heh."