Another wacky electronic voting incident

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 08:35:33 -0500
From: "Elliott, Lee" <lelliott () fosterparentsplan ca>
Subject: Another wacky electronic voting incident
To: "'dave () farber net'" <dave () farber net>

In the last election I had the opportunity to vote here in Toronto, we had
an electronic voting system as well.  However ours was paper based, like the
Scantron cards they use in university, where you use a pen or pencil to
'fill in the box' next to your choice.  This is then scanned into a computer
and the ballot is kept.  Election results are very quick and there is a
paper trail.

Lee

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/36146.html

Computer voting snafus plague California
By Thomas C Greene in Washington <mailto:thomas.greene () theregister co uk>
Posted: 10/03/2004 at 11:14 GMT
Bizarre election results in California have been traced to an electronic
touch-screen ballot system. But no one is quite sure what went wrong, and
because there is no paper trail, no one is ever likely to get to the bottom
of it.

In several Orange County precincts last week, more ballots were cast than
the number of registered voters can account for, the LA Times reports.

Around 5,500 citizens appear to have unwittingly cast votes in the wrong
districts, out of a total of 7,000 who experienced some manner of snafu, the
newspaper reckons.

The unlikely number of ballots cast in certain precincts alerted officials
to the difficulties. This does not mean that less obvious errors did not
occur at the same time. But at least, in those areas where the ballots cast
exceeded voter turnout, it is known that some manner of snafu occurred.

A spokesman for the voting system manufacturer hastened to make a virtue of
the bungling: "David Hart, chairman of Texas-based Hart InterCivic, which
manufactured Orange County's voting system, said it would be impossible to
identify which voters cast ballots in the wrong precincts because of steps
the company had taken to ensure voter secrecy. For this reason, an exact
account of miscast ballots is impossible," the LA Times says.

Fortunately, the discrepancies - at least those that have been detected -
are too slight to have influenced the outcomes of any elections. However,
had any of the races been close, Orange County would have found itself in
the awkward position of knowing that an election is doubtful, and having no
hope of sorting it out.

Since a paper recount is impossible with the majority of these machines, one
has to wonder if touch-screen voting might eventually inspire nostalgia for
the hanging chads, political wrangling and mass confusion that propelled
George W Bush into the Oval Office. The old system may have been a nasty
business, but at least we know what went wrong with it. ®


Lee

Lee Elliott

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