New Jersey Lawsuit Challenges Electronic Voting
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A coalition of private citizens and local elected officials in New Jersey plan to file a lawsuit to block the state's use of electronic voting machines.
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Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Tuesday and Wednesday:
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Two voters have filed challenges to the governor's election with the state Supreme Court &#151; the first shots in an anticipated legal battle over the amazingly close contest.
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A federal appeals court on Monday revived a lawsuit seeking a paper trail for Florida's new touchscreen voting machines with only five weeks left before the presidential election.
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A Florida law that bars exit polling near voting places violates the press' rights under the First Amendment, a lawsuit filed by The Associated Press and five television networks alleges.
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More than 4,500 votes have been lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered other problems may change results in races around the state.
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SEPTEMBER 03, 2004  - A Maryland county court yesterday rejected a challenge to the use of electronic voting machines that sought to allow voters to opt out of using the technology.
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The success of last week's primary election using touch-screen voting machines heartens officials in other states, where e-voting has been problematic. Still, the Silver State may be in a unique situation.
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Six U.S. states participating in Super Tuesday primary elections are at high risk for voting-machine malfunction or tampering because they don&#39;t have paper backups, according to a report released by the Verified Voting Foundation and Common Cause.Ed Felten, a computer science professor at Princeton University, added visuals to the report&#39;s findings when he published a picture on his blog showing him standing next to unattended e-voting machines in New Jersey Sunday evening. The picture, and a second photo from Monday evening of unattended e-voting machines, was a repeat performance for Felten, who also published a picture of unattended machines during the 2006 election.&quot;It&#39;s well known that paperless electronic voting machines are vulnerable to tampering if an attacker can get physical access to a machine before the election,&quot; Felten, an e-voting critic, wrote on his blog Tuesday. &quot;Most of the vendors, and a few election officials, claim that this isn&#39;t a problem because the machines are well guarded so that no would-be attacker can get to them. Which would be mildly reassuring -- if it were true.&quot;New Jersey was one of the states most at risk with the others being New York, Tennessee, Georgia, Delaware, and Arkansas, said the Common Cause/Verified Voting Foundation report. All of those states, except New York, use electronic voting machines without paper ballots in all or part of the state. New York has passed a paper record law but has not yet replaced lever machines used across most of the state, the groups said. Lever machines can malfunction and are subject to tampering, the groups said.But e-voting advocates said the Common Cause/Verified Voting Foundation report exaggerates potential problems with electronic voting machines.&quot;In the history of the United States, there has never been a case of tampering with electronic voting equipment in an actual live election environment with all of the associated procedures and election personnel, either with voter verifiable paper trails or without,&quot; said Michelle Shafer, vice president of communications and external affairs at e-voting machine vendor Sequoia Voting Systems. &quot;Election administration is about the people, procedures and the technology, not just the technology itself.&quot;In many cases, states maintain individual electronic files of all votes cast, added David Beirne, executive director of trade group, the Election Technology Council. Many states also require logic and accuracy testing both before and after an election, and many e-voting machines have redundant memory mechanisms, he added.&quot;No voting system represents a high risk for the states that are using them,&quot; he said. &quot;The main objection from Verified Voting ... is that the voter is not verifying a paper document in addition to the electronic record. The voter does verify the electronic record, and the election can be verified for its integrity through the use of the appropriate security procedures by local election officials.&quot;The report &quot;reflects a series of perceptions which are not grounded in fact,&quot; Beirne added.But the high-risk states have no choice but to trust the information that the electronic machines spit out, said Pamela Smith, president of the Verified Voting Foundation. &quot;The vote is what it is, or what the machine says it is,&quot; she said. &quot;There&#39;s no way to do a recount.&quot;In addition, another five states -- Alabama, Arizona, Massachusetts, Utah, and Oklahoma -- use paper ballots along with their e-voting machines, but don&#39;t require regular audits to check the electronic results, the groups said. Four states with primaries on Tuesday use voting machines but also require regular audits, and were listed as low-risk in the report. Those states were California, Connecticut, Illinois, and Missouri.Twenty-four states hold presidential primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, but just 15 of them use electronic voting machines.
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Michigan's presidential primary took a legal hit Wednesday when a lawsuit was filed asking a judge to keep the Jan. 15 contest from going forward until questions about access to voting records are resolved.
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The Supreme Court will hear arguments that an Indiana law prevented voters from having their ballots counted.
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Just five weeks before Election Day, a federal appeals court Monday revived a lawsuit demanding that all Florida voters who use touchscreen machines receive a paper receipt, in case a recount becomes necessary.
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A watchdog group sued Friday to try to stop Cuyahoga County's elections board from rejecting thousands of provisional ballots until they are hand checked against voter registration cards.
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Advocates for paper-verifiable electronic voting were encouraged Wednesday by unanimously passing a resolution calling for the drafting of requirements for independently verifiable voting records, just days after a different audit proposal was rejected.
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US District Judge Roy Cohn in Florida rejected a suit Monday seeking to create a paper trail for touch-screen voting machines. The suit was filed by US Rep. Robert Wexler.
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Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Thursday:
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Threatened with a lawsuit to block the use of electronic voting machines, New Jersey's Office of the Attorney General is defending them as secure.