Electronic-Vote Critics Urge Changes to System
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Voting activists on Wednesday  enlisted computer experts, a trained monkey and a man on a  hunger strike in a last-minute pitch to convince officials to  improve the security of electronic vote-counting systems.
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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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So-called "paper audit trails" are unlikely to solve accuracy problems associated with electronic voting and would in fact introduce another potential problem to the mix, according to a report issued Tuesday. But even some critics of current e-voting tech are discounting the ITIF's take on the matter.
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Ohio's e-voting systems are unreliable and insecure and should be changed, according to a new report done at the request of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.
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Elections experts today questioned the reliability and security of e-voting systems during a congressional committee hearing.
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As proposed legislation adding safeguards to electronic voting languishes, criticism of the bill is mounting among legislators and experts.
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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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ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND - Poll observers in about 6 percent of Maryland's precincts recorded 201 problems with electronic voting machines during the Nov. 2 general election, according to a report released Tuesday by TrueVoteMD.org.
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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.
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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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Move arrives after complaints from underdog Democrat Dennis Kucinich and little-known Republican Albert Howard about "irregularities" in hand- versus electronically-counted ballots.
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The primary day debacle in Montgomery and Prince George's counties will add momentum to regional efforts to ensure that election systems create a paper record of each vote, according to some elected officials and activists critical of paperless balloting.
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INTERNET and telephone voting should be dumped until ministers get a grip on electoral fraud, sleaze watchdog Sir Alistair Graham warns.  (c) 2007 Liverpool Echo. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning.
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If you think the country is divided and rancorous about the presidential contest, try polling a few experts about the accuracy and security of electronic voting.
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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.
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The GAO report released earlier this month makes no bones about it: Security and reliability concerns about electronic voting are real and demand attention from federal, state and local authorities. So where, asks Brad Friedman, is the outrage?
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While most experts appear to agree that electronic voting has real problems, few argue that they could completely undermine the November election.