Cast Your Vote - Report Highlights Difficulties with Electronic Voting Machines

We're all familiar, perhaps even tired, of reports of voting problems, dare we say fraud in some cases? Since Bush v. Gore, such voting issues have been a hot topic. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) only deepened the controversy by ushering electronic voting machines into our lives. Conspriacy theories about the 2004 elections popped up like mushrooms. The conventional wisdom was that the 2006 mid-terms put to rest remaining concerns about the efficiency and efficacy of electronic voting machines (notwithstanding the Florida 13th district bruhaha).

But out today is a report by VoteTrustUSA.org (homepage) that deserves all our attention. No, this is no shrill accusation of vote-fixing and over-arching conspiracies. This is a reasoned, serious, documented accounting of the 2006 vote. The full report can be downloaded here.

One of the most troubling findings among the conclusions is this,

there were over three and a half times as many reports of problems with DREs; nearly nine times as many usability difficulties with DREs; and over fifteen times as many reports of long lines and/or voters leaving without voting. In fact, scanner or EBM malfunctions only resulted in long lines and/or voters leaving without voting when poll workers failed to allow voters to deposit ballots for later scanning.

Tennesse is one of those 38 states that rely on DRE or Direct Record Electronic voting machines. Here in Metro Nashville, long lines were the story of the 2006 elections. (Tennessean) The high turn-out was great news. The inability of the of system to handle a robust electorate is not.

The Davidson County Election Commission's answer is to buy more machines. While more machines may help, this report casts doubt over the type of machine itself. It's not an issue of the brand or manufacture of machine (whether Shelby county's Diebold machines or Davidson's iVotronics). (Tennessean) Nor does it seem to be purely an issue of familiarty with the machines as the report finds,

The problems experienced cannot be blamed entirely on the implementation of new equipment in this election cycle. For example, 78 problems were reported about the DREs Georgia has been using since 2002, and the equipment which is now the subject of legal challenges in Sarasota County, Florida has been in place since the 2002 primaries.

A sobering read.