The dangers of e-voting (again)

[mdlbear]

Update: Problems with e-voting reported early in battleground states | InfoWorld | News | 2008-11-04 | By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

Problems with e-voting machines were reported early on election day in several U.S. states, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, which are identified as battleground states where the outcome of the vote could tip the presidential race in favor of either Democratic Sen. Barack Obama or Republican Sen. John McCain.

According to voter reports on the ground and from watchdog organizations, there were problems with getting e-voting machines up and running in these key states and others, and in some cases the machines would crash during the voting process and had to be rebooted.

Pennsylvania and Virginia were among states Verified Voting, an advocacy group focused on improving voting systems, and other watchdog organizations said they would keep a close eye on for voting problems. Neither state had early voting before Nov. 4, nor do they require paper-trail backups with the touchscreen electronic-voting machines in place at polls.

Critics of e-voting say that without a paper trail, there's no way to audit the results of a touchscreen machine, often called DREs, or direct recording electronic machines.

I'm not saying that there is deliberate fraud going on, only that it wouldn't surprise me at all, and that there's no way to detect it.

Comments

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

I'm in central Ohio, and while I was elated to be able to get ahead of time my own specific sample ballot from online (*), when I was told that I had the option of a paper ballot instead of a machine this morning, I immediately took it.

(*) I live in on one town's edge, but in the next town's school district. Between school levies and bond issues, very few other people had my exact ballot. I was relieved to be able to concentrate my preselection decisions on only the races that applied to me.