Reply #27: WAPO: Tech Trouble in the Voting Booth

[rumpel]

Washington Post

Jurisdictions May Not Be Ready for New Gear, Analysis Says
By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, July 26, 2006; Page A15

Last year, a report called "Asking the Right Questions About Electronic Voting" took a look at the issues surrounding the move by most of the country's election jurisdictions to electronic voting machines. The report's theoretical approach contrasted with the often bitter dispute about the security of the technology between activists and voting-machine vendors.

The report's authors -- a committee of National Research Council experts, including prominent computer scientists and two former governors -- then turned their attention to this year's elections. What they found, according to a council analysis released yesterday, is not reassuring:

"Some jurisdictions -- and possibly many -- may not be well prepared for the arrival of the November 2006 elections with respect to the deployment and use of electronic voting equipment and related technology, and anxiety about this state of affairs among election officials is evident in a number of jurisdictions."

More than a third of all of the nation's 8,000 voting jurisdictions will use new voting technology for the first time this year, according to Election Data Services.

"This is a moment of truth for electronic voting," said panel co-chairman Richard L. Thornburgh, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and U.S. attorney general. "You've got a lot of people who are working for the first time with the new technology. It should impart a greater note of caution than what you might normally attend to a regular election."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/25/AR2006072501355.html