Building a Better Voting Machine

[lanlady]

It's been six years since the Florida presidential fiasco launched a flurry of spending around the country to replace antiquated punch-card and lever voting machines with expensive new electronic touch-screen machines. Yet new controversies over the security of e-voting machines continue to crop up, making it clear that the new machines are just as problematic as the ones they replaced.

Why can't the voting machine companies get it right?

With election season upon us, Wired News spoke with two of the top computer scientists in the field, UC Berkeley's David Wagner and Princeton's Ed Felten, and came up with a wish list of features we would include in a voting machine, if we were asked to create one.

These recommendations can't guarantee clean results on their own. Voting machines, no matter how secure, are no remedy for poor election procedures and ill-conceived election laws. So our system would include thorough auditing and verification capabilities and require faithful adherence to good election practices, as wells as topnotch usability and security features.

Here, then, is our nomination for the best voting machine for 2008. Use the comments tool below to tell us how your perfect voting machine would look.

...more...
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/evote/0,71957-0.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

[Bitwit1234]

1. ATM type voting machine

After the 2004 election I read somewhere and I am going back and check and see if I can find it again, that someone in India proposed a voting machine to the United States, that cost in the hundreds of dollars and not the thousands and thousands that Diebold makes.

They said it was similar to a small ATM and when you voted you got a receipt with the results of the vote. And that it was not hackable. But the US government on behalf of most of the states turned it down. WHY I wonder.

[Maestro]

2. I just read that article.

Anything is better than what we have now. I wonder if Diebold has consulted people like this. Oh wait, they only consult rethugs. :eyes: