Wed
Feb 13 2008
11:21 am
Good but inaccurate news on voting machines
By: R. Neal

KNS: Voting machines may get replaced

The proposed "Tennessee Voter Confidence Act" calls for replacing the "touch screen" voting machines used in Knox County and 92 others with the new paper-trail devices by "no later than" the 2010 elections.

This is great news, and you can read the article for the details.

There is a glaring inaccuracy, though, in the first paragraph that is repeated several times throughout the article regarding "touch screen" systems. Knox County does NOT use "touch screen" voting machines.

In fact, a recent TACIR report on Tennessee election systems says that all 95 counties in Tennessee use electronic voting in some form. Two use optical scan systems (one by Diebold, one by ES&S), 17 use touch screen DRE systems (by Diebold and ES&S), and the rest (the vast majority) use pushbutton DRE systems (by Hart and Microvote).

So in fact, only 17 counties use "touch screen" systems and Knox County is not one of them, nor is Blount County. The rest (78 counties) use a more reliable system. Knox and Blount counties both use the Hart system.

But all of these need to be replaced with optical scan ballots, which can be read by humans for audits and in the case of recounts or machine failures.

Topics:
Average Guy's picture

Trailing Hugo

Submitted by Average Guy on Wed, 2008/02/13 - 11:46am.

I was first aware of this about 4 years ago. I would have to believe government officials have known about deficiencies in these systems much longer.

How is it we are heading into another election and we still can't confirm our votes? People should demand better, or at least take a picture of your screen.

Side note: We are trailing Venezuela and Hugo Chavez when it comes to voting;

Voting will take place using an electronic touch-screen voting machine that will provide every voter with a receipt. This allows the election authorities to conduct a manual recount of the paper receipts if the tally of a particular voting centre is challenged.

(link...)

Our founders would be mortified.

Paul Witt's picture

I thought we selected the

Submitted by Paul Witt on Wed, 2008/02/13 - 12:32pm.

I thought we selected the eSlate machines because they were a more flexible system. It has handicap accessibility features as well as a paper trail add-on.

(link...)

Not that I'm against optical scan ballots.

R. Neal's picture

They (eSlates) also

Submitted by R. Neal on Wed, 2008/02/13 - 12:44pm.

They (eSlates) also eliminate the problem of vote misregistration attributed to touch screens (i.e. screens out of calibration or problems with angle of view causing a vote to be cast for a candidate other than the one intended by the voter.)

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