New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson knows it. On his completely reasonable preference for paper ballots instead, the governor writes, "[w]ith paper ballots, the fundamental principle of one person, one vote will be assured."
100,000+ Votes Were Errantly Added by Hart Machines in a Single County in Last Tuesday's Primary via Flawed, Paperless 'eSlate' Touch-Screen System! Discussing computer "glitches" during the Texas primary, notes, "[o]ne such "glitch" occurred in Texas' Tarrant County, which encompasses Fort Worth. That "glitch" resulted in some 100,000 votes being added to the result totals across the county's paperless Hart-Intercivic "eSlate" touch-screen voting system."
Tarrant County's Election Programmer sent two complaint letters to election officials and the Secretary of State, detailing irregularities.
Department of Justice vs. New York State Lawsuit
On Tuesday, 3/14/06 the Department of Justice (DOJ), New York State, New Yorkers for Verified Voting (NYVV), the League of Women Voters of New York State and the individual citizens who are requesting Intervenor status will have a first opportunity to appear together in court. The hearing will take place on March 14, 2006 at 11:00 AM in the US District Court, Northern District of New York, in Albany New York.
The citizens and civic groups who have requested Intervenor statusare maintaining that the DOJ action to force New York to overhaul our voting systems before the September 2006 primary risks Election Day chaos. An effective and secure implementation requires substantial time for certification, training and installation which is not possible under the current timeframes. Also, the lawsuit could result in New York being forced into hasty purchase of voting systems which are not secure, poorly tested, and which fail to reliably and accurately record and count votes. Using untested voting systems acquired in haste is a recipe for disaster.
Paper ballots were found in studies to be the most reliable voting system Well, duh.
An October 2005 report of the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that current federal standards and initiatives are ineffective and are unlikely to provide solutions to voting system problems in a timely fashion.
States that rushed to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act by the Jan. 1 deadline have run into operational failures in actual elections. The faulty voting systems acquired by these states had passed federal testing and certification procedures.
Thanks to twistedchick for the links.