Company to Pay for Election Problems

technoid_ writes to tell us the Indiana Star reports that Election Systems & Software has agreed to pay the Indiana State Government $245,000 in addition to extra hand-on and technical support in response to problems during the May primary. From the article: "The company, which has faced similar complaints in other states, reached a settlement with Arkansas officials Monday. In that deal, ES&S pledged services, training materials and technical support but offered no payment. Jackson, the Johnson County clerk, said the company "has done a 360" since the primary. ES&S officials have been more assertive in preparing for the fall elections. The instructional materials, she said, also will help."

More assertive?

[smooth wombat]

ES&S officials have been more assertive in preparing for the fall elections.

Yeah, they need to make sure the 'right' candidate is elected.

There is a court case in PA which is trying to force the 57 counties which currently use electronic voting machines to use paper ballots [constitutioncenter.org].

Obviously this will never happen because having paper ballots would mean having a physical record of a vote if there was a need to do a recount. And we wouldn't want to have a physical trail of votes, now would we?

Paper Records.

[Irvu]

Leaving aside the Sarcasm, that's exactly what we want. Other states including New Mexico and Washington have gone this route as have many counties. In all cases its because of the demonstrated problems with voting systems. In New Mexico's 2004 election we have a perfect test case. In that year the state employed eight different systems scattered more or less randomly thuought the state. Four of these systems were optical scanners and four were paperless touchscreen or push-button DREs (Direct Recording Electronic systems). In the 2004 Presidential race it was found that votes were missing largely from minority voters. Worse yet the missing votes were in up-ticket races, noteably the U.S. Presidential Race. Typically votes are missing for down-ticket races like local judges. Interestingly enough these patternes appeared on all the paperless systems not just systems made by one company or another. Lost votes were not a problem in precincts using the optical scanners. The excess (overcounted) votes were removed because they had the paper backup.

At the risk of nagging people, this info doesn't belong just on /. It belongs in letters to our state and local elections boards (whoever actually sets the law). It belongs in local newspapers via op-eds. Other people are concerned but most of then simply know nothing about these problems. Changing opinions on this issue won't really happen here, but elsewhere.

Some choice morsels of info can be found Here [votersunite.org], here [votetrustusa.org], here [votepa.us], here [washburnresearch.org] and here [truevotemd.org]