Ed Rasimus wrote:

Paranoia serves no useful purpose. With both sides observing elections
and all players buying into the system, the reliability of high tech
voting shouldn't be dangerously compromised.

And, regarding the original author's piece--does it make a difference
where the machine was made? Is there a lot of significance if the
software is noted as version 4.2.4 on the back and only 4.2 on the
screen? Gimme a break.

Sometimes there have been paper "receipts" of the vote and sometimes
not. But I think a paper backup for "electronic" forms of voting
really is important.

It takes a lot of effort to change or invent votes people cast
"the old fashioned way". It takes only a few lines of code for
it to be done electronically.

And what happens if the vote is a statistical tie? You're back
to counting paper, which is very difficult to count when it doesn't
exist.

Recently, in a test case of a touch screen voting machine, it was
discovered someone had [maliciously] changed the order of the
candidates from the touch screen to the actual code doing the
count. A vote for candidate A actually registered for candidate B.

The military was playing with the idea of allowing absentee voting
by web, but has dissed the idea for the coming election.

A wise choice I think.


SMH