US Mid-Term Polls: A Whiff Of Scandal?
The wrong kind of voting machine could bring chaos to the mid-term elections in the United States, says The Economist.
“The polls go up, the polls go downand there are still more than three weeks to go: time for any amount of sleaze or terror to influence the voters. But it is quite possible that America’s mid-term elections on November 7th will produce a close result, not just in the House of Representatives, where it has long been predicted, but in the Senate too. At which point things could get fraught.
“The problem is voting machines. Not the ones with hole-punches and their chads, hanging, swinging and dimpled. Since the debacle of 2000 in Florida federal money to the tune of several billion dollars has been lavished on replacing them. Unfortunately, many have been replaced with new ones that may be even worse.
“In a close election the prospect of just a handful of the 435 House seats or one or two of the 33 Senate seats at stake being furiously challenged in court is all too plausible. Like the presidency in 2000, the colour of Congress could have to be decided by lawyers.
“How could this have happened? Mainly because lots of states and counties went for touch-screen devices, very like ATMs, instead of a much better alternative, optical scanners that count votes marked by hand on paper ballots, rather like lottery forms or multiple-choice exam papers.
“The good thing about scanners is that the original ballot is by definition available for re-counting. With touch-screens, it isn’t. Fortunately, more than half of America’s 3,000-odd counties have opted for scanners. But about a third have chosen the touch-screens.
“The solutions are not hard to find: a wholesale switch to paper ballots and optical scanners; more training for election officials; and open access to machine software. But it is too late for any of that this time — and that is a scandal.”
8 Responses to “US Mid-Term Polls: A Whiff Of Scandal?”
In Oregon, we have an “all postal voting” system, of the scan-tron variety (#2 pencil style). I don’t understand why this “low tech” solution isn’t more popular. For me, it decreases the intimidation factor of voting, because I can sit down with all my voting materials, and spend a few hours making relatively informed votes on each race and issue.
Get your absentee ballots while you still can!
Some things just shouldn’t be privatized. Our vote is one of them.
BTW, don’t crow too much about those optical scan machines: they have also been proven inaccurate time and again.
Why can’t we just count paper votes by hand like every other democracy?!?
Ready for a bit of irony? Here in Georgia, our Democratic governor, “King Roy” Barnes insisted after the chaos of the 2000 election that we throw out our optical scanners and hand-marked paper ballots and get 100% Diebold touch screen machines by the November 2002 election. No Republicans had a say in the decision.
Um, the touch screens are perfectly capable of printing out each person’s ballot, and they could store them in case a manual recount was ordered. It’s completely a political decision to not do this.
We do not vote with paper. We use machines as well. Click on your choice, the computer asks you to verify, verify, you casted your vote.
“Um, the touch screens are perfectly capable of printing out each person’s ballot, and they could store them in case a manual recount was ordered. It’s completely a political decision to not do this.”
Just like an ATM machine. Diebold -one of the largest ATM manufactures in the USA- excluded a printer on their first version of their voting machine. Their reasons were that the counties didn’t ask for a printer AND it would have made the machine more complicated. I’m not saying it was a big cover-up just that it does show poor judgment on their management to leave out a printer when their ATMs have them.
Now that their machines have proven to be less than tamper resistant, the paper trail is even more important. I know all of the Diebold voting machines in my state are required to have a printer to produce a paper trail. Hopefully more states have done the same.
The security of paperless machines is a concern, but reports like this show there are a lot of other problems as well.
Another nice feature of Oregon’s vote by mail system is that I can make a photocopy of my ballot before mailing.
But that whole I.D. requirement may doom Oregon’s vote by mail.