[LINK] Computer voting snafus plague California

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Computer voting snafus plague California
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
The Register
Posted: 10/03/2004 at 11:14 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/36146.html

Bizarre election results in California have been traced to an electronic
touch-screen ballot system. But no one is quite sure what went wrong, and
because there is no paper trail, no one is ever likely to get to the bottom
of it.

In several Orange County precincts last week, more ballots were cast than
the number of registered voters can account for, the LA Times reports.

Around 5,500 citizens appear to have unwittingly cast votes in the wrong
districts, out of a total of 7,000 who experienced some manner of snafu,
the newspaper reckons.

The unlikely number of ballots cast in certain precincts alerted officials
to the difficulties. This does not mean that less obvious errors did not
occur at the same time. But at least, in those areas where the ballots cast
exceeded voter turnout, it is known that some manner of snafu occurred.

A spokesman for the voting system manufacturer hastened to make a virtue of
the bungling: "David Hart, chairman of Texas-based Hart InterCivic, which
manufactured Orange County's voting system, said it would be impossible to
identify which voters cast ballots in the wrong precincts because of steps
the company had taken to ensure voter secrecy. For this reason, an exact
account of miscast ballots is impossible," the LA Times says.

Fortunately, the discrepancies - at least those that have been detected -
are too slight to have influenced the outcomes of any elections. However,
had any of the races been close, Orange County would have found itself in
the awkward position of knowing that an election is doubtful, and having no
hope of sorting it out.

Since a paper recount is impossible with the majority of these machines,
one has to wonder if touch-screen voting might eventually inspire nostalgia
for the hanging chads, political wrangling and mass confusion that
propelled George W Bush into the Oval Office. The old system may have been
a nasty business, but at least we know what went wrong with it.

--
The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who
count the votes do
-- Joseph Stalin

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at austarmetro.com.au