Electronic voting not ready for prime time

By Howard Dean
In December 2000, five Supreme Court justices concluded that a recount in the state of Florida's presidential election was unwarranted. This, despite the desire of the Florida Supreme Court to order a statewide recount in an election that was decided by only 537 votes. In the face of well-documented voting irregularities throughout the state, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision created enormous cynicism about whether the votes of every American would actually be counted. Although we cannot change what happened in Florida, we have a responsibility to our democracy to prevent a similar situation from happening again.

Some politicians believe a solution to this problem can be found in electronic voting. Recently, the federal government passed legislation encouraging the use of "touch screen" voting machines even though they fail to provide a verifiable record that can be used in a recount. Furthermore, this equipment cannot even verify as to whether a voter did indeed cast a ballot for their intended candidate. Unfortunately, this November, as many as 28% of Americans - 50 million people - will cast ballots using machines that could produce such unreliable and unverifiable results.

Only since 2000 have touch screen voting machines become widely used and yet they have already caused widespread controversy due to their unreliability. For instance, in Wake County, N.C. in 2002, 436 votes were lost as a result of bad software. Hinds County, Miss. had to re-run an election because the machines had so many problems that the will of the voters could not be determined. According to local election officials in Fairfax County, Va., a recent election resulted in one in 100 votes being lost. Many states, such as New Hampshire and most recently Maine, have banned paperless touch screen voting and many more are considering doing so.
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There is nothing partisan about the survival of our democracy or its legitimacy. We cannot and must not put the success of one party or another above the good of our entire country and all our people. To the governments of the fifty states, Republican or Democrat, I ask you to put paperless e-voting machines on the shelf until 2006 or until they are reliable and will allow recounts. In a democracy you always count the votes no matter who wins. To abandon that principle is to abandon America.

http://www.dodgeglobe.com/stories/060104/opi_0601040026.shtml

and they said that Monroe County (Rochester Metro) would not be using electronic voting unless the state made the decision to do so. NY state will not make that decision this year so we will be using the traditional methods here for this year's election. I thanked the woman I was speaking to, said "so my vote will count?" and she laughed and said, "it will for this year, yes".

Perhaps if everyone called their local Board of Elections they will realize the public's concern over this matter.

Go Howard! We love you.

Faxing this article to them is a good idea as well, not to mention to our Senators and representatives.