New Jersey Court Won't Block Electronic Voting

SilentChris writes "A New Jersey court has denied an e-voting ban request made by Rutgers University on behalf of a voter. The plantifs argued the machines 'are "inherently insecure" and do not offer a backup paper record of each vote, which means there is no way to verify ballots if there were a recount' (much the same as arguments made on Slashdot). The court responded by saying the 'alternative is worse. Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'. Despite the setback, the case hasn't been officially dismissed. However, the plantiffs will need to take action today to have an effect on next week's presidential election."

Comments

Re:Ballot Box Observers

[lpontiac]

Does anyone know of any state law (NJ or otherwise) which guarantees independent observers the right to verify the "ballot box" is empty before voting begins, to observe the box at all times during vote casting, verify that the box is sealed after election is closed, and observe the counting of the votes post-election?

This happens in Australia. The observers aren't really independant - but each candidate on the ballot in question gets to send one.

Sounds like far too sane an idea for voting in the United States though.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[NigelJohnstone]

"I haven't used a paper ballot in nearly 20 years. But seems to me that they didn't have serial numbers that were cross-indexed with the voter rolls then, so switching ballots out wouldn't have been all that hard if someone had wanted to."

My understanding of US paper voting is this (based on how it works in Europe):

You vote on a specially printed ballot with security features.
Your vote goes into a locked ballot box which the local polling workers can't open.
The ballot box is taken to be opened and counted.
All of these steps are done in front of representatives of opposing candidates.

So its difficult to see where the swap would occur without the candidates representative seeing it. Ballot stuffing use to be possible, until they started counting the voters through the door, ballot box distruction was possible, but now they're metal boxes individually numbered and tracked with a signature trail.

So paper trail elections seem pretty damn good to me.

Electronic voting could be made to work, but it could use an audit trail. Otherwise a tap on the screen is all thats needed to change the votes recorded.