Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting

Kaseijin writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan models by July 1, 2008 — the most aggressive timetable of any jurisdiciton rethinking this approach to voting. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."

Comments

great idea

[ILuvRamen]

I think we should buy one for each Slashdot 10th anniversary party and smash them.

Translation:

[urcreepyneighbor]

sold to other jurisdictions We don't trust 'em, but you should!

Re:Translation:

[Pete LaGrange]

These should be returned to the manufacturer as unfit for intended purpose and a full refund extracted.

Re:Translation:

[lenski]

My favorite use for touchscreen ex-voting machines would be to drive a printer that generates human-readable ballots. Said ballots would be perfectly fine to count either by optical-scan readers or normal unaided humans.

Touchscreen "ballot printers" would go a long way toward eliminating overvotes and reducing undervotes (since a voter must be permitted to abstain from a particular race or issue).

As long as the Official Legal Ballot is durable and readable by unaided humans. The human can then manually scan his/her selections on the paper ballot before committing it to the official count. If the touchscreen system failed to record the voter's intent accurately, the voter can place the the machine-printed ballot in a rejection pile and fill in a paper ballot using manual methods (pencil, pen, etc.)

The point is that the voter must be able to audit his/her voting selections on the official legal record before committing it to the secure but open vote counting process.

Re:Translation:

[AuMatar]

The decision not to use highly insecure and completely unauditable machines to elect our leaders with? Yes, that decision should be forced an everyone.