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Comment by threatofrain | Hacker News Reader

I thought particularly interesting was the description of the UX:

> In a statement to supporters Friday, Cruz cited “multiple reports” of race selections changing and added “once you select the Republican party ticket, please be patient and do not select ‘next’ until the ballot has populated all of the selections.”

It reminds me of an era of "Please don't press 'Buy' twice or your credit card could be charged again."

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Understandable but hardly justifiable when voting machines first were implemented, but the provider has had many years to improve their product. That they don't suggests they are paid regardless of quality, or it is working as intended.

I think you may be overestimating how often these machines get updated. I don't know about the internals, but as a long time TX resident I can say that the machines I saw last time I voted (2016) didn't look much if any different than the machines I saw at least 10 years ago, and probably longer. Also, there's got to be some amount of overhead related to certification and training for each new design, so the state has plenty of incentive to keep using the same machines.

It makes me think they must be recycling old POS systems from gasoline pumps -- the ones where you twiddle your thumbs, waiting for the display to update.

And, any kind of real QA should have / would have caught this. Anything simulating a real user.

Leaving me with no confidence whatsoever in the design, engineering, and manufacturing of this system. This problem leaves no room for benefit of the doubt.

A lot of these machines are ancient, so quite possibly of that vintage. And yeah, in general you're very right not to have any confidence.

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