Florida to ditch touch-screen e-voting

darkcrow

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/23/so-it-begins-florida-bans-touch-screen-e-voting-machines/

So it begins: Florida bans touch-screen e-voting machines
Posted May 23rd 2007 8:52AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets



If you didn't see this one coming, we'll just assume the glaring sun had you blinded, as the Sunshine State has apparently had quite enough of the e-voting woes within its borders. Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed into law a bill "requiring that all voting districts in the state replace most touchscreen electronic voting machines with optical scan machines." From day one, the state has been plagued with one mishap after another, and while some touch-screen systems will be maintained for "handicapped voters that require its features to vote unaided," the vast majority of the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines will be nixed in favor of a less hackable flavor. Flinging one last blow of frustration at the e-voting curse, Crist went so far as to suggest that ditching them would allow Floridians to "leave the polling place knowing that their vote had been counted and recorded and can be verified." Of course, we're sure the tax-paying citizens of the state are entirely more focused on the $27.8 million he approved to buy all new optical scan equipment.

Heineken Helen

The whole e-voting thing scares the shit out of me... we still have the good old fashioned paper ballots here. Some people try and tell us that this makes us look stupid and old fashioned... who cares. It's 100% hack proof. I would never ever trust e-voting. We spent millions on a new system here (something like 50million euro I think but could be completely wrong) but then it was ditched before it was even used cos it was proven too easy to hack into.

markymark550

nothing is 100% secure

there are ways, albeit difficult ways, that one or a group would have to go through to rig a paper ballot election

Heineken Helen

markymark550 wrote:

nothing is 100% secure

there are ways, albeit difficult ways, that one or a group would have to go through to rig a paper ballot election

Extremely difficult to the point of impossible I think. Besides IF a group of people were to try and rig it.. there ARE spot checks and some are double checked.

jeffbr

Floridians seem incapable of voting anyway. With paper ballots they couldn't punch through the cards and the workers had to devine intent by reading tea leaves and hanging chads. What is it with Florida?

blackredyellow

jeffbr wrote:

Floridians seem incapable of voting anyway. With paper ballots they couldn't punch through the cards and the workers had to devine intent by reading tea leaves and hanging chads. What is it with Florida?

An odd bunch down there... maybe it's the humidity or all of the old people? Whenever you see one of those stories in the "Odd News" or something like that, chances are it happened in Florida.... or Germany....