149
The ‘Doom’ Computer Game Was Part Of Trump’s Wild And Baseless ‘Election Security Nightmare’
(talkingpointsmemo.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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politics
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Trump has no idea what he's talking about, but it is a serious issue if these voting machines are still in-use.
A voting machine should be a dumb embedded system. If it can run doom, they did something very, very wrong.
You can run Doom on some DSLRs. These days, it can be hard to find bottom-end hardware that can't be made to run Doom.
The point is you shouldn't be able to tamper with it to replace the software on it
Not Doom itself..
It sounds like you don’t know how tech works.
That the hardware can run some software is not an indication that it is flawed or vulnerable in any way.
I was an embedded systems lead professionally lmao
Microcontrollers can be locked down and have fuses burnt so you cannot reprogram them
So you don't ever get to update them or fix bugs without entirely new hardware... yeah, all the counties around the country can afford that.
This is a voting system, not a sign at the bus stop
Security is paramount
It shouldn't even be electronic in the first place
You say that as if you know the setup of how computers are used in elections. You should check your county, to see if you can get certified as an election observer. It's very educational.
The computers used in elections have highly controlled inputs: no network cards, disabled USB ports, very restricted access by limited, accountable people. They are constantly tested for accuracy, with everything logged and inspected. Security is the most paramount thing, and you're talking like only you care about it.
Human counting is far less accurate, so the "no computer" notion is just stupid.
I live in Australia where computers are not used to place votes, where there need to be no special trusted accountable computer people
https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI
https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs
Here's Tom Scott explaining why electronic voting is a bad idea
Good for you. Enjoy your elections with 1/12th of the population of the US.
What does population have to do with it?
United Condom with 70 million people also use paper voting
We all use paper ballots, too. We use computers to count them.
Do you not know this, about the system you're judging?
yeah, I looked it up-- you need 4 MB of ram and a 80386 processor to run doom, which was released in 1993. A crummy pixel phone processor is about 3500 times faster than a 80386. And a low end computer today has at least 8 gb of memory, which is 2000 times 4 mb.
This cheapo TI-30XA calculator for $9.99 on amazon has roughly the same MIPS rating (million of instructions per second) as a 80386 processor from that era.
https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-TI-30Xa-Scientific-Calculator/dp/B00000JBNS/138-5956401-1751427?psc=1
I'm not shocked that a voting machine has the same capability as a $9.99 calculator. Its probably the cheapest processor they can find.
Sure, and DSLRs aren't voting machines.
Imagine running doom on pen and paper
My carpel tunnel acted up when I read this.