NY: Why push electronic voting machines? Follow the money trail [View All]

Why push electronic voting machines? Follow the money trail

Stephen H. Unger • January 27, 2008

By not rushing to adopt the "latest" voting technology, New York has, so far at least, avoided the disasters that have befallen more punctilious states such as Florida, Ohio and California. Expert studies have shown that the quality of all commercially available e-voting systems is abysmal, and that they are vulnerable to large-scale fraud.

snip

The first three points do not apply to "optical scan" systems, where voter-marked ballots are fed into machines for tallying. They are, therefore, not as bad as touch-screen machines. However, they too can be corrupted and, due to the lack of recount rules, we cannot rely on recounts of paper ballots to correct or deter fraud.

The old lever-type voting machines used in New York and New Jersey have not caused serious problems. Recording errors can occur for individual machines, due to mechanical problems, but these don't seem all that common. A fundamental shortcoming is that there are no provisions for paper audit trails. However, wholesale fraud, possible for both touch-sceen and optical-scan machines, is not an issue.

snip

Because, on average, elections are infrequent, voting machines, unlike computers used for most other purposes, are used only a few times a year. This explains the surprising fact that e-voting elections generally cost more than manual count elections. Costs are inflated by the need for testing prior to each use, maintenance, programming of ballot definition files, secure storage and transportation.

snip

Although staffing manual-count elections can be problematic, good solutions exist. In New Hampshire, high school students are added to a mix that also includes senior citizens. Some Nebraska counties treat election work as a civic obligation akin to jury duty. In Germany, polling place staffs include civil servants on detached duty from their regular jobs. So why isn't everybody rushing to adopt manual counting? One important reason is that there is no money in manual systems, whereas big bucks can be made by lobbying politicians to sell e-voting systems. State and local officials would be wise to ignore the hype, and take a realistic look at risks and costs.

snip

http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080127/OPINION/801270311/1076/OPINION03