Tuesday, January 08, 2008

The New York Times Magazine featured a lengthy story this past Sunday about voting machines and their integrity, raising the question of whether America is ready for another contested election. I haven't yet read the piece, but you'd have to be in a cave not to have some questions about this topic.

MoveOn is using Clive Thompson's article as a jumping off point for a petition:

The petition says: "We must act quickly to secure our elections with paper ballots and audits before November."

 

Elections are run at the state level, so we'll deliver your signature and comments to local election officials in addition to members of Congress.

 

Electronic voting machines are so unreliable and insecure, we might elect the wrong person president in 2008. As The New York Times Magazine reports:

[Voting machines] fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report that their choices "flip" from one candidate to another before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes simply vanish. (In the 80-person town of Waldenburg, Ark., touch-screen machines tallied zero votes for one mayoral candidate in 2006—even though he's pretty sure he voted for himself.) Most famously, in the November 2006 Congressional election in Sarasota, Fla., touch-screen machines recorded an 18,000-person "undervote" for a race decided by fewer than 400 votes.

1/8/2008 1:20:29 PM by Not For Nothing | Comments [0] |  
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