"E-Vote Machine Certification Criticized"

From the AP:

The three companies that certify the nation's voting technologies operate in secrecy, and refuse to discuss flaws in the ATM-like machines to be used by nearly one in three voters in November.

Despite concerns over whether the so-called touchscreen machines can be trusted, the testing companies won't say publicly if they have encountered shoddy workmanship...

Although up to 50 million Americans are expected to vote on touchscreen machines on Nov. 2, federal regulators have virtually no oversight over testing of the technology. The certification process, in part because the voting machine companies pay for it, is described as obsolete by those charged with overseeing it...

Critics of reliance on touchscreen machines want not just paper records - only Nevada among the states expects to have them installed in its touchscreens come November - but also public scrutiny of the software they use. The machine makers have resisted...

In Huntsville, the window blinds were closed when a reporter visited the office suite where CIBER Inc. employees test voting machine software. A woman who unlocked the door said no one inside could answer questions about testing...

While this article -despite being posted at NewsMax - has its biases, and despite the fact that most of the people who complain the loudest about touchscreen voting are far-left loonies, this could be a right issue. Perhaps a bipartisan effort could be mounted to clean up the whole system. The right will agree to make sure that e-voting is as accurate as can be, and the left will agree to allow illegal aliens, dead people, and household pets to be removed from the voting rolls.

See also my still-unfinished essay "'Electronic voting will never be 100% secure' - draft zero".

Politics · Sun, 08/22/2004 - 19:23 · · Importance: 1