Polls' printers to help ensure accurate votes (in CA)

[question everything]

Polls' printers to help ensure accurate votes

ELECTION: San Bernardino County's electronic machines now allow a paper trail.

Monday, October 10, 2005

By MICHELLE DeARMOND / The Press-Enterprise

(snip)

(San Bernardino, CA) will become the most populous county in the nation to let voters view their ballots on a paper printer while using touch-screen voting machines. Any of the county's voters can try their hands at the new tricked-out machines Tuesday in the registrar's office. The Secretary of State's office and the Legislature consider the new technology a crucial security feature and have ordered California counties to attach printers to their electronic machines by 2006.

(snip)

San Bernardino County's printers will be attached to the touch-screen machines and will be set behind glass. Voters will be able to review their choices on the paper copy and make changes before casting their final ballots -- so they can feel certain the electronic vote is accurate. Voters will not be able to touch the paper, which resembles a cash-register tape, and they won't be able to take it with them. Voters who prefer paper ballots can still request them at polling places.


Riverside County is making a different change in response to security concerns. All ballots this year will be counted at the registrar's headquarters in Riverside, Registrar Barbara Dunmore said. In the past, some ballots have been counted at offices far from Riverside, such as Blythe. The results then were transmitted to Riverside after polls closed. Critics have questioned the security of those transmissions.

(snip)


Riverside County also is rolling out ROVER, the vote mobile. The portable polling place will travel to several remote sites in the upcoming weeks to give voters an opportunity to cast early ballots. The city of Blythe, which has several municipal items on the November ballot, is one of those sites. ROVER, which stands for Registration, Outreach, Voting and Education Resource, also will be available Election Day to fill in for polling places that are unable to open, Dunmore said.

(snip)

Reach Michelle DeArmond at [phone] or [email protected].

Online at: http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_D_vote10.8ef5ae5.html

[newscott]

1. This is still crap

No machines. Paper ballots.

[Skwmom]

2. This in no way will "make certain the electronic vote is accurate."

The paper ballot says one thing, the vote that the computer includes in the tally says another. Exit polls could be used to detect discrepancies but in a tight race that's not a given plus they've worked very hard at trying to discredit exit polls in the U.S.