Worries Persist Over U.S. Electronic Voting
562323
Florida officials will not worry  about hanging chads when voters make their choice in November's  presidential election but they'll be on the lookout for  software glitches, hackers and other less visible plagues.
615465
Paperless electronic voting machines used throughout the Washington region and much of the country "cannot be made secure," according to draft recommendations issued this week by a federal agency that advises the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
562285
Electronic voting in the US. The saga continues. Here is an interesting comparision with a Venezuelan referendum. &quot;80% of Americans could correctly name the first President Bush&#39;s pet dog Millie, but only
468724
(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.
175258
More weaknesses appear in the Diebold electronic voting system that activists say could be used to rig the November election. The company says auditing procedures would catch any vote fraud. By Kim Zetter.
295603
Just five weeks before election day, federal legislators are increasingly casting doubt on electronic voting terminals and demanding that touchscreen computers produce paper records.
498359
Vendors make plea for reality Electronic voting machines used in Ohio contain critical security failures that could jeopardize the integrity of state elections, according to a study commissioned by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.â¦
167131
Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Tuesday:
588001
Among the security concerns that have been raised is the possibility of someone being able to cast multiple ballots. Other concerns are about a sudden power outage and whether data would be lost in such a scenario.
82831
As the Electoral College prepares to certify President Bush's re-election on Monday, concerns persist about the integrity of the nation's voting system &#151; particularly in Ohio, where details continue to emerge of technology failures, voter confusion and overcrowded polling stations in minority and poor neighborhoods.
594691
I spent much of this afternoon in a mandatory (for poll workers) four hour training class on the Hart InterCivic eSlate voting system, soon to be in use in elections in my home county. (Hart InterCivic is a privately held firm out of Houston, specializing in election equipment and in software products for county records offices). Contrary to my previous impression, the machines are not touch screen machines, although they share some similarities.  I went into the class skeptical; I have been a critic of what I percieve as an unseemly rush to adopt insecure electronic voting systems. I emerged guardedly optimistic; the systems appear, from what I can tell, to be reasonably secure against vote manipulation by people who are not part of the election staff, and they appear to provide approximately the same level of security against election office malfeasance that paper ballots do. At the end of the day, if the election staff wants to tamper, they can; but that was true with paper ballots as well. That risk can be mitigated by election office procedures intended to mitigate it; in San Mateo County's case, those procedures have in some important regards not yet been established, as I will discuss below.
426109
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.
615920
Activists and computer programmers Wednesday demonstrated what they said were flaws with electronic voting machines that could allow hackers to change vote outcomes Nov. 2...
33378
Electronic voting machines should not be used in the United States without a paper-based backup to ensure they tally votes correctly, computer experts working for the U.S. government say.
149046
The Bush and Kerry campaigns, along with a range of advocacy groups, are concerned with the integrity of voting technology -- particularly in the states where votes matter most. By Jacob Ogles.
83713
The company will pony up $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit over allegedly flawed electronic voting systems it sold to California counties. Surprise: E-vote activists still aren't happy.
433895
Voters living abroad face an unwieldy system of absentee balloting that could prevent their votes from being counted.