Even in this election off-year, the potential perils of electronicvoting systems are bedeviling state officials as a Jan. 1 deadlineapproaches for complying with standards for the machines'reliability.
Across the country, officials are trying multiple methods toensure that touch-screen voting machines can record and count voteswithout falling prey to software bugs, hackers, malicious insiders orother ills that beset computers.
This isn't just theoretical - problems in some states already haveled to lost or miscounted votes.
One of the biggest concerns surrounding computerized ballots -their frequent inability to produce a written receipt of a vote - hasbeen addressed or is being tackled in most states.
Still, an October report from the Government Accountability Officepredicted that overall steps to improve electronic voting machines'reliability "are unlikely to have a significant effect" in nextyear's elections, partly because certification procedures remain awork in progress.
"There's not a lot of precedents in dealing with these electronicsystems so people are slowly figuring out the best way to do this,"said Thad Hall, a political scientist at the University of Utah andco-author of "Point, Click, and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting."
Copyright 2003 by Telegraph-Herald, All rights Reserved.
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