E-voting State By State

jcatcw writes "One-third of Americans will use voting machines next week that have never before served in a general election. Computerworld.com provides an overview of e-voting in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia — equipment, systems for voter registration, polling, significant legal challenges to the systems, previous media coverage, links to government watchdog sites, the vendors, technologies and laws that are important to the issue, and a review of 'Hacking Democracy.'"

Comments

Average Age of Poll Workers is 70

[Digital Flux]

I just heard on the news that the average age of poll workers is 70! I've seen many older people, even younger than 70, try to use a computer--and figure out what it's doing, and it's painfully difficult to watch. It's just a technology that they haven't grown up with, and have a hard time grasping. I'm not knocking the abilities of old dogs to learn new tricks, but it seems to me that the younger generation (including myself), need to step up to the plate here and start to help out in polling places.

I mean I'm not trying to sound cynical or mean, but alot of the poll workers I've encountered have a difficult enough time trying to find my name on their roll sheets. How are they supposed to be the safe-guards against people tampering with these machines?

Once place where paper still makes sense.

[slusich]

This is one place where paper is still called for. Even if the paper is generated by computer in the form of a reciept, there must be some way to account for every vote. Perception of the voting machines alone is enough reason not to use them without a paper trail.

Re:Voter fraud is nothing new

[LardBrattish]

Er, if you look at the last two presidential elections the amount of fraud is incredible and, indeed, provable (Wikipedia has some nice articles with links to the raw data otherwise try blackboxvoting.org). The scary thing to me (as an outsider) is not the fact that fraud occurs. It's just the fact that the American public seem so utterly apathetic to the fact that democracy has been extinguished.

For example, exit polls are a proven and incredibly accurate way of estimating results. In fact, the only times anywhere in the world ever that they have broken down is when gross electoral fraud has taken place - except in America during the last two presidential elections where the pollsters suddenly and catastrophically failed to conduct an accurate exit poll, but it wasn't due to electoral fraud, oh no.

It seems to have turned into a party political issue where the supporters of the winning party accuse the losers of "whining" when the actual evidence of fraud should scare them more than their opponents because it means that they, the loyal voters have become expendible. They don't need you anymore. They can win the election without you. The president now has the power to declare martial law & he has the machinary (hah!) to deliver the results he wants.

Re:our electronic voting works just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

But you must be identified with a picture ID. That alone negates any sense of security that a true secret ballot provides.

If only you were old enough to vote, you would realize that one must be a "registered voter" in order to vote (in the U.S.) Thus you must register with some central organization, usually the county or city you live in. It may seem odd to give that authority to the very same group tasked with actually conducting the election, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

Now, I've only been voting for about 25 years, but I've always had to present either photo ID or a voter registration card (usually both) in order to vote. So this great threat that you fear is really nothing new.

The idea of a "secret ballot" is that no one but you knows how you voted, so you can vote your conscience, not to hide whether or not you showed up at the polls (since no one sees your ballot, there is no way to tell whether you voted for someone or no one at all).

And this picture ID, is there a fee for it?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Because if it's required, and if it isn't issued for free, then Indiana has reinvented the poll tax.