Extra checks on voting machines rejected
Staff and agencies04 December, 2006
By STEPHEN MANNING, Associated Press Writer 6 minutes ago
GAITHERSBURG, Md. - A federal advisory panel on Monday rejected a recommendation that states use only voting machines that produced results that could be independently verified.
The failed resolution, proposed by Ronald Rivest, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and panel member, closely mirrored a report released last week warning that paperless electronic voting machines are vulnerable to errors and fraud and cannot be made secure.
"They should be longer-range goals," said Britain Williams of the National Association of Election Directors. "You are talking about basically a reinstallation of the entire voting system hardware."
Some panel members worried that the systems with audit trails could present problems of their own, including printer errors. Others said it was unclear whether paper records could be used by voters who are blind or have other disabilities.
That could lead to a scenario where you have "got an election result that is wrong and you have no evidence to show that it‘s wrong," he said.
The paperless voting machines are essentially laptop computers that allow voters to cast their ballots by touching a screen, and then tally the results. They are widely used across the country.
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