More E-voting Problems in California

thefultonhow writes "Wired News is running a story about Napa County, CA's problems with their new E-voting system. Not only did an optical scanning machine fail to record absentee ballots properly, necessitating a recount of 13,000 ballots, but now Registrar of Voters John Tuteur is saying that the machine used in precincts failed to count 6,692 votes. The incumbent Napa County Supervisor had originally lost his bid for reelection by only 50 votes (the recount of absentee ballots bumped that up to 107 votes), so with nearly 7,000 votes gone AWOL, this is a big deal." The first Wired link above shows that the discovery of the problem was apparently mostly chance: if none of the 10 (ten!) ballots picked for rescanning had exhibited the problem, they might not have figured it out. It also suggests a new strategy for rigging the vote: pass out pens of a certain type in districts unfavorable to your candidate, then calibrate the machine not to read that type of ink.

Comments

What does this have to do with 'e-voting'?

[goldspider]

This is a story about machines not being able to read a certain kind of ink.

The fact that the ballots are 'counted' by a machine doesn't make this an "e-voting" story.

This problem has been around for YEARS! Nothing to see here, folks. Take off your tinfoil hats and move along.

Re:Keep it simple

[TrollBridge]

"Keep it simple: paper and marker pen."

RTFA - this IS about paper and pen ballots, and a machine's inability to properly record it. This has NOTHING to do with people voting on computers.