Electronic voting just got a major setback in California.
California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley ended five months of speculation and announced Friday that he was decertifying all electronic touch-screen voting machines in the state due to security concerns and lack of voter confidence.
He also said that he was passing along evidence to the state’s attorney general to bring criminal and civil charges against voting-machine-maker Diebold Election Systems for fraud.
Shelley said the ban on touch-screen machines would stay in effect unless and until specific security measures could be put in place to safeguard the November vote.
[…] “Revelations regarding touch-screen machines have shaken public confidence in this voting technology,” Shelley said, referring to four computer-science reports released in the last year that showed the machines to be badly designed and vulnerable to hacking. “It is my foremost responsibility to take all steps necessary to make sure every vote cast in California will be accurately counted.”
Good. With all the alleged problems of manual voting systems — and they are legion — the quick and sloppy shift over to electronc systems that are still buggy and which lack decent mechanisms for manual recounts in case of problems seems highly problematic. Granted that it’s a senstive issue politically — I expect law suits now regardless of what happens — it makes more sense to move slowly on this rather than quickly.
(via RISKS)
We’ve been using the touch-screens in Riverside County for years, and I really like them. Orange County’s problems seem to have stemmed from poor training of the poll workers. I fear the AG may be over-reacting, although I would like a paper receipt with a record of my votes.
Like most things, the quality of the electronic voting system is highly dependent upon the manufacturer. Diebolt seems to be the cheap (and buggy) supplier. Other suppliers (like Hart Intercivic) have avoided security issues whatsoever by not utilizing a Microsoft OS and avoiding the use of a touchscreen.
A lot of the resistance to electronic voting comes from the fact that the political parties have long experience at manipulating manual voting systems to their advantage (hanging chads, manual recounts etc.) but have not figured out how to take advantage of some of the electronic systems (yet).