Come next year, the jitters are only going to get worse. The Help America Vote Act requires that e-voting machines be placed in all polling locations for the first federal election after January 1, 2006. No more punch cards or levers. That means that governments have to make a choice about what to buy. Yet controversy swirls over what is the best electronic voting technology, whether it's secure and if it's necessary to have a paper trail.
According to a story in Computerworld, few systems or best practices have been given the nod by state or federal agencies. And the U.S. Government Accountability Office contends that debate over the security and reliability of e-voting systems it going to continue into next year. The study found problems with existing systems, such as cast ballots that could be modified, operational failures during elections and supervisor functions protected with weak passwords.
Election officials stuck between a rock and a lever machine may want to look at one study that tested six e-voting systems for how user friendly and accurate they are (although it didn't test for how secure they are). Full disclosure here: Paul Herrnson, the University of Maryland professor who led the study, is my cousin. I attended a lecture he gave called "Beyond the Hanging Chad: The Promise and Performance of Electronic Voting."
That ballot design can affect whether someone is able to vote accurately, and even to influence elections, was made only too clear in Florida in 2000. Election officials don't want to end up with the electronic version of the butterfly ballot.
With grants from the National Science Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, Herrnson and a team of researchers put six machines through their paces. He details where accuracy was compromised and how often "voters" needed assistance. It's at least some additional information for voting machine shoppers. It seems at the moment that purchasers may not have the luxury of waiting to buy until electronic voting systems are certified for accuracy and security by the federal or state governments.
