After the butterfly ballot brouhaha in Florida 2000, there’s been a concerted effort to get new, bright, shiny, computerized, touch-screen, electronic voting machines out to the populace. Because, after all, if it’s on a computer, it’s clearly more accurate than all that messy paper chaddy analog stuff, right?
Um, right?
Ask the election officials in (stop me if you’ve heard of this place) Broward and Palm Beach Counties, Florida. There, in a special election last week, a few problems cropped up.
The counties were responding to Tuesday’s tight special election for a state House seat that covers portions of Broward and Palm Beach counties. Out of 10,844 votes cast, returns showed Ellyn Bogdanoff defeating Oliver Parker by 12 votes, with 137 voters casting blank ballots on touch-screen voting machines.
Florida law requires a manual or hand recount of all “under-votes” and “over-votes” in an election decided by less than 0.25 percent.
But touch-screens leave behind nothing to count by hand.
So not only could no recount be made, per state law, but the number of “blank” votes (computer error? voter error?) exceeded the margin of victory.
Yeesh.
The use of potentially insecure computer systems, with unproven (and unexaminable) software, which don’t leave a manual tally … all sound like a recipe for disaster. And I say that as someone who works with computer systems all the time …
Not that the old ways are more foolproof (as Florida 2000 showed). But at least there we had some understanding of the flaws in the system.
(via RISKS)
It gets even better when you start questioning the motives of the people that make the voting machines. The president or CEO of Diebold has been heard to say that he will deliver Ohio’s votes to the President (Bush). Doesn’t sound like the kind of talk I want to hear from someone making voting machines.
Check out http://www.blackboxvoting.com for more on the ongoing saga of electronic voting machines.
I’m not sure I want to suggest that the manufacturers of voting hardware should not be allowed to contribute or campaign in favor of a particular candidate (or face restrictions beyond what any other company has). Diebold’s got enough problems with flaky software already.