I firmly believe that someone who finished freshman year in a computer science degree could make a vote tallying application. Its literally just incrementing like 5 variables.
Yeah, you literally could. The code to actually scan the ballot may be a bit more complex, but the actual counting is just "if(vote == canidate_1) {canidate_1_votes++} else if(vote == canidate_2) {canidate_2_votes++} etc etc all the way down for each canidate. I'm sure it could be done more efficiently, but the point remains you're just taking a couple variables and adding 1 each time they get a vote. It's not rocket science.
If it was just dumb counting software, it should be relatively simple. What should just be a simple counting program with full paper logs of every action taken probably has morphed into something that tries to do way too much.
Enterprise software companies usually pile every random feature into their program, schmooze and wine and dine the executives in charge of making the final decision, and then give the purchaser easy justification for choosing the complicated software because they get treated like a king and can easily justify buying the complex software because it has more features.
Even besides manipulation and weighting functions, I'd imagine this software has lots of tools for communicating with other machines, sending and reporting data to central sources, being remotely controllable, and many other features that are unnecessary for the core functionality. Buried within this complexity it's easy to encounter actual bugs and hide manipulation functionality even from employees trained in this software's use.
What should be used is some kind of simple, open source counting software available on sites like Github and fully audited every year by multiple nerds.
I firmly believe that someone who finished freshman year in a computer science degree could make a vote tallying application. Its literally just incrementing like 5 variables.
spez: typo
Yeah, you literally could. The code to actually scan the ballot may be a bit more complex, but the actual counting is just "if(vote == canidate_1) {canidate_1_votes++} else if(vote == canidate_2) {canidate_2_votes++} etc etc all the way down for each canidate. I'm sure it could be done more efficiently, but the point remains you're just taking a couple variables and adding 1 each time they get a vote. It's not rocket science.
You would use a switch statement. Switch(cantidate){ Case "trump": Trump++; Break; Case "biden" Biden++; Break;}
If it was just dumb counting software, it should be relatively simple. What should just be a simple counting program with full paper logs of every action taken probably has morphed into something that tries to do way too much.
Enterprise software companies usually pile every random feature into their program, schmooze and wine and dine the executives in charge of making the final decision, and then give the purchaser easy justification for choosing the complicated software because they get treated like a king and can easily justify buying the complex software because it has more features.
Even besides manipulation and weighting functions, I'd imagine this software has lots of tools for communicating with other machines, sending and reporting data to central sources, being remotely controllable, and many other features that are unnecessary for the core functionality. Buried within this complexity it's easy to encounter actual bugs and hide manipulation functionality even from employees trained in this software's use.
What should be used is some kind of simple, open source counting software available on sites like Github and fully audited every year by multiple nerds.