ADVANCE VOTING began today at the Lyon County Courthouse. Did you go vote? If you did how did you feel about using the touch-screen voting terminals?
During the last election, I used a touch-screen terminal to cast my vote, but after voting I felt a little unsettled that there was no paper trail of my vote.
Computer data can be easily lost or manipulated and with no paper trail, chances are it is just a matter of time before an election controversy happens.
I was relieved to read last week in The New York Times that I was not alone in my thinking.
The Times had a story on how touch screens have come under fire for unreliability and experts have concluded that touch screens could not be secured from tampering.
According to the article, new federal legislation is expected to pass this year to do away with touch-screen voting systems.
Florida is no stranger to voting foul-ups and that state is already taking steps to abandon the touch-screen voting system and move to one with a paper trail. The change will cost Florida $32.5 million.
Switching to a system with a paper trail makes sense. This may be a case where taking a few steps backward may actually be taking a few steps forward.
Government can be slow to change, but it is good to see lawmakers moving quickly to make a change before there is an election mishap.
jbbrinkman (anonymous) says...
Good point - but there has been many cases of voting machine fraud in the U.S. Here is a nice collection...
http://www.linkcrusader.com/vote_mach...
February 8, 2007 at 12:49 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )