ELECTRONIC VOTING'S HIDDEN PERILS, By Elise Ackerman, Mercury News.
...For an unknown reason, the computerized tally program had begun to award votes for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Burton, a socialist from Southern California.
Similar mishaps have occurred across the country since election officials embraced electronic voting in the wake of the Florida vote-counting debacle of 2000.
When Californians go to the polls next month to choose a presidential candidate, many voters will cast a virtual ballot by pressing a computer touch screen that records their votes digitally. The only tangible proof that a citizen has voted -- and how he voted -- will be fingerprints left on the machine's screen.
Electronic voting removes the risk of election officials misinterpreting hanging chads. But it raises another electoral peril: that a digital ballot box might miscount votes without anyone noticing.
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