From The Associated Press, 1/6/08:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/politics/ci_7896804?nclick_check=1
Doubts about e-voting whip up scramble for paper ballots
By George Merritt
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DENVER --
With the presidential race in full swing, Colorado and other states
have found critical flaws in the accuracy and security of their
electronic voting machines, forcing officials to scramble to return to
the paper ballots they abandoned after the Florida debacle of 2000.
In December alone, top election officials in Ohio and Colorado
declared that widely used voting equipment is unfit for elections.
"Every system that is out there, one state or another has found that
they are no good," said John Gideon of the advocacy group Voters
Unite.
"Everybody is starting to look at this now and starting to realize
that there is something wrong."
The swing states of California, Ohio and Florida have found that
security on touch-screen voting machines is inadequate.
Testers have been able to disable the systems and even change vote
totals.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 effectively required that states
have electronic equipment in place by 2010.
There are no documented cases of actual election tampering involving
electronic voting machines.
But in tests, researchers in Colorado found that electronic voting
systems could be corrupted with magnets or with Treos and other
similar handheld devices.
In Colorado, two kinds of Sequoia Voting Systems electronic voting
machines used in Denver and three other counties were decertified
because of security weaknesses, including a lack of password
protection.
Equipment made by Election Systems and Software had programming
errors.
And optical scanning machines, made by Hart InterCivic, had an error
rate of one out of every 100 votes during tests by the state.
"I was surprised," Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman said
Friday of the failures his office found.
"It's an awful position to be put in, but I feel strongly it's
important that this equipment be secure and accurately count a vote."
Now some states are turning back to paper -- in some cases, just weeks
before primary elections.
California is one state that has chosen to use scanning machines that
count paper ballots electronically.
In Colorado, which has spent $41 million in federal grants on
electronic systems, many of the state's nearly 3 million registered
voters -- and the county officials who conduct the voting -- don't
know what their elections will look like in 2008.
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Harry
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