ANOTHER REASON YOU'VE GOTTA HAVE THE PAPER TRAIL FOR ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES

In the 2004 Palm Beach County general election, according to the organization BlackBoxVoting.org, it found the electronic voting machines logged over 100,000 errors, including memory failures. Not only that, but in approximately 70,000 cases cards got stuck in the ATM-like machines.

From the AP story appearing in newspapers today:

Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units... Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning.

Bev Harris, founder of the non-partisan group, also claims that the one machine showed 112 votes cast two days before the start of early voting in Palm Beach County, a possible sign of tampering, and that evidence of tampering was found on at least 30 machines countywide.

County election officials are disputing the claims, saying that many of the issues had to do with voters not following proper procedures such as inserting their user cards into the machine wrong. They also say that many of the other errors would not have affected the vote total, as there are backups in place.

Regardless, friends, this simply strengthens the voice for a "paper trail". While no system can truly be tamper-proof, I like Polk County's use of an electronic voting machine (scanner) with paper ballots that can be counted if needed.