Lever voting machines, punch cards must go by 2006

[Lou Puls <lpuls@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This story was sent to you by: Lou

"[HAVA] orders states to dump punch card and lever machines and provides money to replace them with direct recording electronic machines."

The incompetent reporting never ends - a voluntary bribe turns into "orders", a paper ballot option turns into DREs only.  Where are the junkyard dogs - corrupted by the dying megamedia?

--------------------
Lever voting machines, punch cards must go by 2006 
--------------------

Pennsylvania under mandate of Help America Vote Act.

By Tim Darragh
Of The Morning Call

August 29, 2004

While incomplete regulations leave the administration of the 2004 vote in flux, one thing is certain -- those tank-like lever machines that most voters in the region use are bound for the voting system scrap heap.

The federal Help America Vote Act orders states to dump punch card and lever machines and provides money to replace them with direct recording electronic machines. Pennsylvania, like most states, received a waiver from the law's deadlines and now has to replace them by Jan. 1, 2006.

At issue is the unreliability of punch card systems and the inability of lever machines to produce a back-up count of votes. Lever machines also have not been manufactured in decades, and keeping them in good working shape is a growing problem nationwide.

But electronic machines are not necessarily a panacea either. Since the Florida vote in 2000 exposed the weaknesses of punch card voting, voting technology experts have said hackers could compromise electronic machines. Machine technology also does not produce a paper trail.

''The thing I like about lever machines, and nobody else is going to tell me differently, is that they're not electronic,'' said Gina Taylor, acting director of Voter Registration and Elections in Monroe County.

Indeed, a study of voting methods co-sponsored by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at residual voting, defined as uncounted ballots, unmarked ballots or overvotes -- where a voter mistakenly votes for more than the maximum number of candidates. The study showed that from 1988 to 2000, paper ballot and optical scan machines left significantly less residual voting than electronic machines.

The report also showed that paper ballots performed better than lever machines, which were used in 65 percent of Pennsylvania precincts in 2000.

Still, the future clearly lies with electronic machines using technology advanced beyond that of many electronic machines in the field today. Although new high-tech machines ask voters electronically to confirm votes before they cast their votes, voting machine manufacturers and researchers are working on developing a verifiable audit trail of votes. The goal is to ensure verifiability and privacy.

Machines also will have to be accessible to people with disabilities.

The federal Election Assistance Commission, also created by Help America Vote Act, has not declared which voting machines are act-compliant, so the state has been unable to tell counties which new machines they can buy.

Brian McDonald, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, said officials are too busy preparing for the Nov. 2 vote to spend much time on new voting machines.

''At some point after November, we'll probably really have to really dig in and see what is compliant,'' he said.

That will leave Pennsylvania with 13 months to meet the federal deadline. Said McDonald: ''That's not a heck of a lot of time.''

There are problems, however, that not even the smartest technology can overcome.

Take the case of one polling place in Exeter Township, Berks County, last year. A voting machine froze up, but its votes were saved when a defective cartridge was replaced, Director of Elections V. Kurt Bellman said.

The cause: Static electricity built up when voters walked on a new rug to the voting booth.

timothy.darragh@xxxxxxxxx

610-778-2259 

Copyright (c) 2004, The Morning Call 

--------------------

This article originally appeared at:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a16_5machine.3859377aug29,0,5785563.story?coll=all-newslocal-hed