Letter of the Month: E-Voting: Not Ready for Prime Time?
Regarding "E-Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?" [News and Trends, February]: I served as an election judge for the 2000 and the 2002 elections in Prince George's County, Maryland. In the 2000 elections we used cranky old lever machines made way back in 1957.
In the 2002 elections we used the shiny new Diebold touch-screen computers. They were brand new but quite cranky, too. The PCMCIA memory cards had to be reseated in many of our machines or they would not boot up. If these electronic machines were this cranky when new, how about a few years down the line?
During the primary election, one of the machines locked up. A technician worked on the machine and declared that the last voter's vote had been counted. Yes, but then why were there 30 paper Voter Authorization Cards whereas the machine had recorded 29 votes? Every other unit tallied according to votes cast and VACs collected. The only proper conclusion was that the vote had not been counted. The only way we knew was by the paper VACs. Hard copy makes a good backup.
For a site that discusses problems with computerized voting, your readers can go to Black Box Voting.
Paul D. Motzenbecker Jr., University Park, Maryland
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