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Major Problems At Polls Feared
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post
Posted: November 11th, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09...
An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat...of last week's Election Day debacle. In Maryland last Tuesday, a combination of human blunders and technological glitches caused long lines and delays in vote-counting. The problems, which followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable. What is clear is that electronic machines have their own imponderables. In Montgomery County, the breakdown came when election officials failed to provide precinct workers with the access cards needed to operate electronic voting machines. In Prince George's County, computers...failed to transmit data to the central election office. At least nine other states have had trouble this year with new voting technology. In Ohio, results from the May primary election were delayed for nearly a week in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) when thousands of absentee ballots were incorrectly formatted. Twenty-seven states require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail available for auditing during a recount, but an analysis of Cuyahoga County's paper trail...showed that a tenth of the receipts were uncountable. For several years, prominent computer scientists have taken aim at the electronic voting machines. In analyses of the software that runs widely used models of the machines...scientists have shown how they could manipulate the machine to report a vote total that differed from the actual total cast by voters. In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines.
Note: For lots more critical information on elections, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation
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