« Touchscreen Vote Stealing, etc. | Main | You Can Take My Marriage License and Shove It »

Touch Nothing

The Guardian has an article today that touches on several issues in my last entry about touchscreen voting problems. David Dill of Stanford University says the touchscreen voting system "is in crisis." A few tidbits from the article:

In an election for a seat in the Florida house of representatives last month, touch-screen machines recorded 127 blank ballots. The race was won by 12 votes. No recount was possible because there was nothing to recount.

In an election in Indiana last year, an electronic system recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters. ...

The criticisms center on three issues: the machines offer no record of how a vote was cast - so no prospect of a repeat of the "hanging chad" fiasco of the 2000 election; the accuracy with which they record votes has been called into question; and they could be vulnerable to computer hackers.

And if you thought the potential for computer hacking was bad, check this out:

But the vulnerabilities extended to more than computer science: Maryland's 16,000 machines all had identical locks for two sensitive mechanisms. The hackers found that they would have been able to have copies of the keys for these locks cut at a locksmith, although ultimately they found it easier simply to pick the locks. It reportedly took less than 10 seconds.

The article says a bill has been introduced to require a paper trail (although it isn't clear in what state they are referring to).

Posted on February 17, 2004 12:20 AM

Comments

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.criticalviewer.com/mt-tb.cgi/23