http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4623970,00.html
Guardian
Unlimited
Group Cites
Electronic Voting Problems
November 18,
2004
By SAM
HANANEL
Associated
Press Writer
WASHINGTON
(AP) - The record use of electronic voting machines on Nov. 2 led to hundreds
of voting irregularities and shows the need for higher standards, a voting
rights group said Thursday.
The
companies that make the electronic machines said their equipment was reliable
and had relatively few problems considering the millions who cast their
ballots.
The Election
Verification Project reviewed nearly 900 reports of electronic voting problems
on Election Day, ranging from lost votes in North Carolina to miscounted votes
in Ohio and breakdowns in New Orleans that caused long lines and shut down
polling places.
``The
documented problems with touch screen machines, vote-counting irregularities
and the fact that votes cannot be verified or recounted show us how vulnerable
our democracy will be in the future when there are disputed or unclear
results,'' said Kim Alexander, a project member and president of the California
Voter Foundation.
The members
of the verification project said they hadn't seen evidence that the problems
would change the election results - President Bush captured 60.5 million votes
to Sen. John Kerry's 57.1 million. But they said the problems raised the
specter of that possibility in a closer race.
Without a
paper trail of electronic votes, they said, officials can never be sure that
machines are recording votes correctly. ``If this were the banking industry,
the gambling industry, there would be standards for making sure the software
was working right,'' Alexander said.
More than 40
million Americans cast their votes Nov. 2 using about 175,000 electronic voting
machines, and the companies said the problems were few.
``To the
extent that such episodes exist, they appear to be of limited scope and easily
fixed,'' said Bob Cohen, spokesman for the Information Technology Association
of America, a trade group that includes voting machine manufacturers.
The project
reviewed dozens of instances where machines misrecorded a vote for Kerry as a
vote for Bush and vice versa. There were other examples where machines had
ballot choices already filled out that voters had to change and instances where
voters filled in selections that suddenly went blank.
The
verification project said malfunctions can be prevented or reduced with federal
and state laws requiring a paper record, national uniform standards for
electronic voting and routine auditing of computerized vote counts.
Guardian
Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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