Congress puts off fixing touch-screen voting

[papau]

Source: salon.com

http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/07/21/voting_machines/index.html

Congress puts off fixing touch-screen voting


<snip>Drew reports that in deference to disability-rights advocates and election officials across the nation, Democrats are watering down New Jersey Rep. Rush Holt's long-in-the-wings bill to address the problems raised by unverifiable paperless touch-screen voting machines. Rather than require elections officials to purchase verifiable optical-scan voting systems, Congress is considering mandating that all the nation's touch-screen machines be equipped with small -- and not very well-regarded -- cash-register-style printers for the 2008 and 2010 election. Only in 2012 would states be required to switch to more secure optical-scan balloting systems.

I just spoke to David Dill, the Stanford computer science professor who founded the voting rights advocacy group Verified Voting, and he calls the quick fix a very bad idea. Dill notes that the printers the House is considering mandating have not performed very well in the past.

In the 2006 primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Diebold's touch-screen machines included thermal printers that were supposed to print out an image of each voter's ballot; the voter was to check this slip of paper to make sure the machine had accurately recorded his vote. But when the Election Science Institute studied that race, it found that nearly 10 percent of the printed ballot images were in some way ruined -- some paper trails had been crumpled, some had been torn, some machines printed out blank sheets.

"Forcing people to buy cheap printers for 2008 -- all that does is allow companies that manufactured bad printers to offload them at taxpayer expense," Dill says. <snip>



Read more: http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/07/21/voting_machines/index.html

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Wired's Kim Zetter and Christopher Drew of the New York Times indicate that Holt is not dead - but all we may get are ATM quality printers. But is that really a problem? An optical scan machines replacement for DREs was never going to get passed the Senate anyway with Diane Feinstein fighting against it for 08 and 10 and saying she would only agree to the change if it was to occure in 2012.

If this is all that is happening and we still get audits and paper as the official ballot - albeit a scap of ATM size paper - I am a happy camper.

[populistdriven]

1. Congress fixing votes

http://pol.moveon.org/repairthevote/

[papau]

2. The Holt bill fixes 2 out of the three - but partisan election officials is a tough one. n/t

n/t

[damntexdem]

3. Oh, yes, we'll wait until after the 2008 Election to fix voting systems.

Oh, what a surprise: defying all pollsters' predictions, the Dems didn't win a single race in 2008!

Yeah, sure -- just wait!

[rucky]

4. Wouldn't want to "tie things up" n/t