'A Matter of Perception': Crist Proposes Voting Paper Trail for Touch-Screen Machines
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By Heather Civil, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach  Feb. 8--Touch-screen voting machines, once touted as a way to cut back on the stacks of paper produced during elections, may end up making paper trails of their own.   Gov.
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With the presidential election less than six weeks away, activists and security experts are ratcheting up concern over the use of touch-screen machines to cast votes.
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An ambitious new type of pen-based computer system could bridge the gap between paper and the digital world.
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(InfoWorld) - A coalition of voting rights groups on Monday called on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would require electronic voting machines to have printers attached as a way to audit the touch-screen results. But the lack of a paper trail for many e-voting machines was only one problem among many during the 2006 U.S. elections, said speakers at the Elections: Looking Forward conference, sponsored by Common Cause, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and other groups. Many of the problems attributed to e-voting machines were caused by a lack of training for poll workers or administrative mistakes, said Efrain Escobedo, director of voter engagement at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Poll workers observed by his group didn't know how to change the paper in machines with paper trails or didn't know how to reboot machines, he said. Participants in the event also described several other problems not related to e-voting: poll workers demanding photo identification when it wasn't required by law, polling places lacking voting materials in languages other than English, polling places inaccessible to disabled people, and long lines. But several speakers called on Congress to pass the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, which would require paper trail printouts with touch-screen e-voting machines. Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced the bill Feb. 5, after a similar piece of legislation failed to pass during the 2005-06 congressional session. The Holt bill has 183 cosponsors, close to half of the House of Representatives. Congress needs to act in the next six to eight months for the legislation to affect the 2008 elections, said Ralph Neas, president and chief executive officer of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group. Neas pointed to the 2006 vote in Sarasota Country, Florida, where e-voting machines did not record a vote from more than 18,000 people in a congressional race decided by less than 400 votes. "Sarasota was a disgrace," Neas said. "Eighteen thousand votes ... inexplicably disappeared into cyberspace. But it's a teachable moment. We've got 18,000 faces now that we can put on the problem." Not all speakers agreed that Congress should move ahead immediately with paper trails. Many visually impaired voters were able to vote without assistance on touch-screen machines for the first time in 2006, said Christina Galindo-Walsh, senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. Paper trail printouts would again create a two-tier voting system in which some disabled people don't have access to the same information as other voters, she said. Galindo-Walsh and Jim Dickson, vice president for government affairs at the American Association of People with Disabilities, also said it was too late for Congress to mandate paper trail ballots by the 2008 presidential election. E-voting machine vendors wouldn't be able to produce enough printers by 2008, Galindo-Walsh said. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002, mandated standards for voting machines, and those standards are just being completed now, Dickson added. Those standards still need to be tested, and new machines meeting those standards need to be built, he said. "Either you lower the standards for the election equipment, or you live with the timeline that looks like 2010," he said. "You cannot have it both ways." But many voters now question e-voting systems, added Melanie Campbell, executive director and CEO of the Coalition for Black Civic Participation. "The reality is voters are losing confidence in the system," she said.
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A coalition of voting rights groups on Monday called on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would require electronic voting machines to have printers attached as a way to audit the touch-screen results.
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An analysis by four university researchers contends a link between electronic voting machines and a pro-Bush skew in Florida.
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Political wonks no longer need to hunch over their PCs to track the political leanings of different regions. A new service sends that data to cell phones and PDAs, so people can find out instantly if they're in a Democratic or Republican stronghold. By Daniel Terdiman.
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(InfoWorld) - With hotly contested nationwide elections just weeks away, several computer experts Thursday questioned the reliability and security of e-voting systems during a congressional committee hearing. Access doors of thousands of Diebold AcuVote-TS touch-screen systems can all be opened with the same key -- a type commonly used for office furniture, jukeboxes and hotel minibars, Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten told the committee. That door protects the removable memory card that stores votes. "Though some claim that election procedures will prevent the kinds of problems we identified, the rigid procedures described in vendor manuals are often ignored in practice," said Felten, co-author of a study that was highly critical of Diebold Election Systems' AccuVote TS. Also today, the Committee on House Administration took no action on legislation proposed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) aimed at remedying e-voting vulnerabilities. The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 550), introduced last February, now has more than 200 bipartisan co-sponsors. Among its various provisions, HR 550 would mandate that each machine produce a paper receipt that could be used in a recount. The bill also calls for e-voting vendors to offer greater transparency to their software. By not sending the bill to the floor for a vote, the committee missed any chance of ensuring that November's elections would produce auditable results, Holt said. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 was aimed at preventing the sort of notorious failures such as occurred in Florida in 2000 due to disputes over manually operated punch-card systems. Some $3 billion was earmarked under HAVA to fund state compliance, with most of that money going to purchase e-voting gear, said committee chairman Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) in his opening remarks for the hearing. "Though HAVA did not require the adoption of any particular kind of technology, many jurisdictions purchased electronic voting systems because they felt these systems were best able to meet the requirements of HAVA," said Ehlers. "Not surprisingly, some jurisdictions using this new equipment for the first time have encountered some difficulties," he said. Ehlers cited recent problems with e-voting gear in Montgomery County, Md. Earlier this week, Ehlers submitted an amendment to HAVA to reimburse any voting jurisdictions that print out paper ballots for voters who prefer not to cast their votes on touch-screen voting gear this November. Similar legislation was filed by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in the Senate. The bill calls for up to 75 cents to be spent per paper ballot. Ehlers estimated that it would probably cost no more than $10 million, based on the estimate of the number of voters in precincts using touch-screen gear that don't offer a paper trail. He told Computerworld he offered the amendment because he didn't expect HR 550 to be passed this year. "We thought in light of the problems we've seen, most recently in Maryland, that collectively, these problems were shaking voters' confidence," he said. "We thought if jurisdictions want to give voters another choice, we should support them in that." Ehlers declined to predict when or if the emergency amendment would pass. Like all House members, Ehlers is up for re-election this year, and his district uses e-voting gear. "Certainly, any voting system that is not verifiable and auditable is of concern," he said.
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Almost three-quarters of likely voters think electronic voting systems should produce a paper record the voter can verify, according to a new poll. But that's not likely to happen for many of them in November. By Laila Weir.
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President Bush may have received up to 260,000 more votes than he should have in Florida counties that used touch-screen voting machines, according to an academic analysis. Researchers call on Florida to examine the results. By Kim Zetter.
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As the primary season continues, observers of the electronic-voting scene ask whether it's possible to tally the ballots efficiently while restoring Americans' faith in the process. Random, mandatory audits of cast ballots show promise, but even after demonstrated successes, not everyone's on board.
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Hoping to avoid the problems of dimpled ballots and hanging chads, election officials around the U.S. will rely on electronic voting machines for tomorrow's presidential vote. But are the machines secure?
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Efforts are intensifying in Congress to pass legislation that would require electronic touch-screen voting machines used in federal elections to provide paper trails that could be checked in the case of a recount.
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The Associated Press asked the presidential candidates to name their favorite electronic gadgets.
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Just five weeks before election day, federal legislators are increasingly casting doubt on electronic voting terminals and demanding that touchscreen computers produce paper records.
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Researchers create digital paper that emits recorded sound in response to a user's touch.
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Gov. Charlie Crist said he wants to spend about $32 million to convert all voting machines in Florida to produce paper trails.