Touchscreen Voting Flawed in Fla.

[Killarney]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040714/ap_on_el_pr/touchscreen_voting&cid=694&ncid=1963&sid=96378798
Touchscreen voting machines didn't perform as well as devices that scanned paper ballots in this year's Florida Democratic presidential primary, raising questions about the state's voting process for the November election, a newspaper reported Sunday.

An analysis of just under half of the ballots from the March 9 election shows that votes were not recorded for about one out of every 100 people using the new machines, or a 1.09 percent rate of undervotes...

[soup]

1. Florida

"The most important thing to take from the (Sun-Sentinel) survey findings is that both electronic systems and precinct-based optical scan systems dramatically reduce voter error. ... The Florida numbers demonstrate a substantive improvement over the 2000 presidential election," said Alfie Charles, vice president of business development for Sequoia.

A touch screen doesn't dramatically reduce voter error. It just eliminates overvotes and recounts. I'm sure the number of errors in 2002 were less than 2000, too. That doesn't make the machines better. It just takes away two of the error factors.

Meghan McCormick, spokeswoman for ES&S, said some voters simply choose to cast blank ballots.

How about adding 'NONE OF THE ABOVE' to the list? At least that way they could determine voter intent.


Theresa LePore, Palm Beach County elections supervisor, said it is almost impossible to eliminate undervotes because some people will choose not to vote for any candidate or will make mistakes.

Mistakes made on things like, oh, butterfly ballots?


"There is only one perfect voting system," LePore said. "That's the one that doesn't involve humans fighting a valid accounting tooth and nail." Gee, Teresa, you didn't finish your sentence. So I did it for you. Were you going to go on and mention the rightwing manufacturers, too, Teresa? Or how these things were so quickly rammed into FL by good ol' Katherine Harris? Guess you didn't have time.
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Go to:
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/reports/electreports.shtml
Read and weep-
Analysis and Report of Overvotes and Undervotes for 2002 General Election (pdf, 282KB)

and while you're there, check this one out (it's been awhile since I've taken the time to go through it. I don't know if the reports are updated or static, but this was quite an eye-opener.):
2003 Report on Polling Place Accessibility (pdf, 512KB)

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Ah, what the heck, as long as I'm at it, How's that Central Voter Database coming along?

The Division of Elections has contracted with Accenture and Election.com to analyze, design, develop, document, test and provide training for the Central Voter Database System.
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/cvdb/