EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Denise Powers
Organization : | private citizen
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Paper Ballots, Hand Counted Suppose your grocery store no longer posted prices; instead, all items were coded with UPC symbols scanned at the register. When it came time to pay, the clerk tells you the total amount due, but you receive no receipt and there is no way to verify that the machine read the prices correctly. Would this be acceptable? If not, then why would you vote this way, with no ability to verify that your vote was properly recorded and/or counted? Even if the voting machine provides a "paper trail" (a receipt), you still don't know how your vote was processed internally. The machine may be programmed (intentionally or not) to show a vote for Candidate A on screen, print a receipt showing a vote for Candidate A, and still add your vote to Candidate B's total. The use of electronic machines makes the process far more costly and complicated than it needs to be. The machines must be moved, stored, maintained and upgraded periodically. Elections should not be subject to power outages and machine failures. Have you ever had your computer crash, wiping out hours (if not days) of work? If you're lucky, you can re-enter the lost data. If this happens during an election, how can you recreate the lost votes?