EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Timothy Willhard
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/9/2005
General Comments
Comment : | 5. There is no verification of the individual votes counted by the machines. If there is a question about the reliability of an individual machine, the vote tabulator can produce another total, but not review any individual ballot. 6. One manufacturer was even sued by a state for using machines that had not been sealed and certified in an actual election. 7. Machines have had software patches (proprietary again) applied to them with unknown code after being certified and used shortly thereafter in an official election. 8. The public has no method to recount votes, even if state law requires it in close elections. 9. There have been cases where vote totals for candidates have actually decreased instead of increased as an election progressed. There has even been at least one election where a vote total has been higher than the number of registered voters in a county. 10. There have been cases where voting totals have been wildly different in a clinching county from every other county in a state and far removed from polling projections and traditional results. The polling projections were only divergent in the clinching county. 11. There have been scores of cases where people have used touch screen machines and chosen one candidate, only to see the vote indicate another candidate was selected, even if they tried over and over to select the first candidate. 12. The few national computing research experts that have been allowed to test current models say that even though some improvements have been made, voting machines are still not properly secure for elections.