The State of Electronic Voting In the 2008 US Elections

Geek Satire writes "Voting works only if you believe your vote gets counted accurately. The 2008 US elections have avoided many well-known problems of the 2004 and 2000 elections, but many problems remain. O'Reilly News interviewed Dr. Barbara Simons, advisor to the Federal Election Assistance Commission, to review electronic voting in the 2008 US elections, discussing the physical security of storing and maintaining election machines, the move from electronic back to paper ballots, and why open source voting machines don't necessarily solve problems of bugs, backdoors, and audits."

Comments

Living in Texas, I cannot be sure

[erroneus]

My vote was paperless. I have no idea if my vote was recorded properly or if it wasn't manipulated in some way after the fact. The only indication I have that it wasn't was the fact that the race was really close and several republicans lost seats largely due to "straight ticket" voting. (many people are hating republicans you know)

One thing will help stop some election fraud -- aggressive criminal prosecution.

Yep, an absolute joke

[Crazy Taco]

I would disagree with the thread's premise that we've avoided the issues of 2000 and 2004. These issues are still going on, this time in Minnesota. Senator Norm Coleman was ahead of Al Franken by over 700 votes when all the votes were counted on the 4th, and EVERY DAY his lead is getting eroded, and the recount hasn't even started yet. Somehow Minnesota precincts keep finding "missed ballots" for Franken, and the current lead has now shrunk to 288 votes. Every single "lost vote" found so far has gone to Franken, and not one to Coleman. That is exceedingly suspicious, especially given the fact that they use optical scanners in that state, and bad ballots are instantly rejected when the voter tries to cast them, giving the voter a chance to do a new one correctly. This isn't hanging chad Florida, but it is very likely fraud.

Additionally, you have widespread reports of people getting to vote without being asked to show any identification, you have black panthers with nightsticks patrolling Philedelphia polling places... voting really is an absolute joke these days.

I do believe Obama actually won the presidential election based on the huge margins, but most races are much closer than that, and it's really impossible to have any confidence in any close races anymore. And with black panthers in the polling places, I worry that eventually we won't even be able to trust the big wins either.