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Voting machine malfunctions

2008-10-19 14:56:14.516004+02 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

Chris forwarded along this note about early West Virginia voters angry about malfunctions in electronic voting machines:

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

I think it's Grey's Law that states "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." I've seen what the touch screens on the credit card machines at the grocery store do to my signature. I notice that ATMs have gone back to buttons along the side. I've looked a little bit at touch screen technology. Doing touch screens right is hard, it's not a mature enough technology to be using in applications like this. If you must use technology in voting systems, use scannable paper ballots, and recall any voting officials who don't have something that leaves a solid physical audit trail.

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