E-Voting Problems Crop Up
629852
As Election Day progresses, scattered reports of malfunctions surface.
298558
A controversy which has flared over two bloggers working for the campaign of US presidential hopeful John Edwards has highlighted the pitfalls facing candidates as they embrace the Web to reach voters.
508090
Paperless electronic voting machines in widespread use across the country may be vulnerable to errors or sabotage and cannot be made secure, a draft report by a federal agency said.
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.
417011
A Sarasota recount is complicated by electronic voting systems. One solution: Bring back paper.
583164
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has asked the GAO to investigate whether problems with e-voting machines have been caused by fraud or mechanical failure.
580958
Friday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on a controversial decision by Missouri's Secretary of State: the state of Missouri will be allowing soldiers stationed overseas to cast ballots via e-mail. Their absentee ballots will be scanned and converted to PDF files, which will be emailed to the Defense Department, printed out, and then faxed to Missouri.  I'm in favor of helping soldiers vote; this is a democracy, everyone should be able to vote. Yet I'm deeply skeptical of this proposal, for two reasons:  The plan depends on e-mailed ballots being printed out and faxed by the Defense Department but does not provide any safeguards against soldiers being sanctioned for how they have voted;  The transmission method is inherently technically insecure
529796
With the presidential election just a few weeks away, the pressure is mounting on both camps to effectively use the Internet to help woo voters and secure an Election Day win.
576843
Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Thursday:
561206
Some voters say machines indicated they had voted for a different candidate.
514920
Company weighs idea after thousands of users vote for it online.
354120
Election day problems in Denver were caused by poorly-designed e-poll book software and what consultants looking into the voting woes called a "casual approach" to important technology by local elections officials.
661208
Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Sunday:
421615
Punch card voting machines that caused chaos in the 2000 presidential election have been replaced by high-tech touch screen balloting in some places, but critics warn the new technology could cause even greater mayhem.
589747
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.
176056
Problems loom for the presidential election including voting equipment changes that could delay the outcome past Nov. 2, a group of international observers said Tuesday in a report.
527312
An organization that put more than 400 poll watchers in Maryland precincts on election day reported Tuesday that its volunteers found scattered problems with the state's electronic voting machines.