Electronic Voting: Better Elections or Just More Problems?

Date: 10/25/04
TechSoup: How-To: Hardware
By Henry Kumagai

Four years ago, with hanging chads in the news and the reliability of the U.S. electoral system in question, states and counties quickly embraced a technical solution: electronic voting machines. After all, went the thinking, with computers there should be no messy paper ballots, hanging or pregnant chads, or any of the other problems.

This year counties in 29 states plus the District of Columbia will offer touch-screen voting machines which will tally an estimated 50 million votes, according to the Washington Post. In California, the Los Angeles Times estimates that 30 percent of voters -- 4.5 million voters in 10 counties -- will cast their ballots using e-voting machines.

With the imbroglio of 2000 fresh in voters' minds, however, critics fear that this haste to embrace e-voting will mire another presidential election in ambiguous and contention-filled results. Will this pivotal election be remembered, not for hanging chads, slim margins, and recounts, but for inaccuracies due to computer crashes and data corruption? [Original Story]