Reply #62: Will DuPage (IL) Voters get "scrunched" in early voting?

[kster]

February 26, 2006 at 10:47:06
by Illinois Ballot Integrity Project Page 1 of 2 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com


WILL DUPAGE VOTERS GET “SCRUNCHED” IN EARLY VOTING?
Cutting corners: County will begin using touch screens and printers that often failed in testing

February 25, 2006. Early voting in Illinois begins Monday February 27th and voters throughout Illinois will use new voting equipment purchased at a cost of about $100 million, primarily with money appropriated under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) which provides funds to replace outdated and outmoded voting systems and ensure increased accessibility and independence for voters with disabilities.


The majority of counties in Illinois, including DuPage, have purchased touch screen devices made by Diebold Election Systems, Inc. The AccuVote-TSX® touch screen comes equipped with Diebold’s AccuView® thermal printer because the Illinois Election Code requires that all touch screen machines have a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). The touch screens are significantly more expensive on a per precinct basis so most election officials are providing only one or two per precinct. That means that most DuPage voters will use paper ballots read by optical scanners.

But how reliable are these new touch-screens and their printers? In the first significant large-scale testing of the Diebold touch-screen terminal and attached printer on July 20, 2005, 96 Diebold TSXs with AccuView printers were tested by the California Secretary of State’s office in a setting designed to emulate a real election. In its report “Analysis of Volume Testing of the AccuVote TSx / AccuView,” issued by the California Voting Systems Technology Assessment Advisory Board, 14 printer problems and 20 software crashes were noted. 29 distinct machines were involved, meaning that 30.2% of the machines tested, nearly one-in-three, failed.


http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_illinois_060226_will_dupage__28il_29_vot.htm