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It’s pretty normal to see a few ballot errors right up to Election Day. Absentee voters have already reported a variety of problems, across the country. It wouldn’t normally be a major issue.
But in this election, ballots may be a bigger question than we expect. There are some pretty serious questions on the reliability of the electronic voting machines that are used in most precincts these days, and problems with paper ballots just makes the situation worrying. The fact that various groups have demonstrated how easy it …read more

I’m an election judge for the upcoming general election. I went to training yesterday morning. We set up a polling place in exactly the same way we will on Election Day, ran through some sample voters and tried to handle the problems we ran into. It was pretty clear that all of us knew what to do if someone tried to campaign within the polling place or tried to vote twice. But not too many of the judges were really sure how to handle any technical issues that came up.
In my county, we use Diebold machines — purchased before Diebold …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

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