...and usually does. Having spent a career in computer software, I had no problem writing the title of this post. Programs are written by men and women; I have not met an infallible person yet and know of no one in history who has. That is why most serious software needs to be extensively tested, no matter how small a change has been made.
Apparently the Secretary of State in Ohio believes otherwise. The office has installed untested software in the vote tabulation machines to be used by a number of counties. The Secretary claims that the software does not need to be tested and certified because it does not directly tabulate or communicate actual votes. Yet, the Secretary's lawyer says, "Its function is to aid in the reporting of results that are already
uploaded into the county's system. The software formats results that
have already been uploaded by the county into a format that can be read
by the Secretary of State's election night reporting system."
I guess the lawyer does not understand that the results that have been transmitted from the counties will be changed in a fundamental way - the format - and thus subject to a faulty conversion of the format. Plus, in transmitting the data from the county there is an opportunity for the transmission to be hacked.
I suspect that this is not the only case where questions can and will be raised.
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