Microsoft, in partnership with Rock the Vote, announced this morning that Xbox 360 owners will be able to “register to vote, participate in presidential polls and voice their opinions to the presidential candidates.” It will all go through Xbox LIVE. The fun starts Monday, August 25, the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
While we’re a Wii household here, I think that this is a great idea. There is a huge demographic that is most easily reached through their video game systems — and I hope that Rock the Vote approaches Sony (the makers of the PS3) and Nintendo (the …read more

According to the poll we had running in the side bar, all of you think that electronic voting is an improvement over paper ballots.
To be honest, I’m kind of surprised. Yes, I think that electronic voting is a major improvement over counting ballots by hand — or even having to run them through an optical scanner. But I know that plenty of people are worried about the various problems that seem to come along with electronic voting.
So, voters, an additional question: Why do you think electronic voting is an improvement over paper balloting?

Ohio’s Secretary of State, Jennifer Brenner, is taking Premier Election Solutions (previously known as Diebold) to court. She’s suing the firm, seeking unspecified damages for breach of contract and fraud.
According to the suit, Premier provided faulty software that caused 11 counties to lose votes. Premier was also already involved in a legal suit with one particular Ohio county — Cuyahoga. That county’s election officials decided to mothball $22 million in Premier machines because of ongoing problems with counts. Premier actually instigated that suit, looking for a declaratory judgment that the company had met its obligations, before Cuyahoga County had decided …read more

One of the key problems with electronic voting seems to be the feeling that most voters have no idea how the machines work — if they’re easy to tamper with or could break down at any time. Voting machines, or at least their software, is proprietary — the companies keep it secret so that no one can steal their ideas. But what if electronic voting machines were open source?
Open source voting machines would require the code behind the software to be easily accessible — anyone could dissect it to find out where problems are. Many people assume that this also …read more

On Sunday, the New York Times ran a massive article covering the issues with electronic voting machines. The online version stretches over 10 pages, so let me provide a short summary before starting in on my response.
Electronic voting machines routinely have problems with the following:

server crashes
software interactions (most run custom software on top of a version of Windows)
printer jams
missing memory cards
touch screen flaws (these range from whether a past voters greasy fingers interfered with your vote to the mysterious ‘drag and drop’ problem in which a certain way of touching the screen causes the machine to crash)
reliability of printouts (they …read more

Voting is a complicated thing. After you manage to make it to the voting booth, you may be faced with any of several types of voting machines, each with a range of possible ballot designs. It can create an awful lot of confusion. The new electronic voting machines have been praised by many, criticized by some, and used by millions. But electronic voting in itself isn’t a silver bullet. Although electronic voting does seem to reduce the uncertainties of older, mechanical voting systems, electronic interfaces can confuse and frustrate the elderly and those with less technological competence, which creates a …read more

As of December 17, Mike Coffman, the head honcho of Colorado elections — his business cards say ‘Secretary of State’ — has decertified the electronic voting machines used in the majority of the state, citing a very long list of security concerns. This comes on the heels of Ohio’s Secretary of State releasing a study noting that Ohio’s electronic voting systems have “critical security failures.”
Coffman has declared the fallibility of electronic voting, but the responses of the various county election boards, as well as the county clerks responsible for overseeing elections.
In an interview with Denver’s Channel 7 News, Denver Clerk …read more