"A surefire election forecast" for Colorado

http://www.denverpost.com/quillen/ci_4394653

A surefire election forecast

By Ed Quillen Denver Post Columnist DenverPost.com

Here is a safe prediction for this year's general election: If any contest is remotely close, there will be litigation about the accuracy of the vote.

Indeed, there already has been litigation. Denver District Judge Lawrence Manzares ruled last week that the electronic voting machines to be used in this election do not comply with the security procedures required by state law. Even so, he declared, to switch to another voting method now, just six weeks before the election, "would create more problems than it would solve."

No voting system is perfect, including the traditional paper ballot. In my days as editor of the Breckenridge newspaper, nearly 30 years ago, I occasionally drank lunch with an attorney who had many years under his belt. He had been quite active in precinct-level machine politics during his youth, he said, and he once reminisced about how "the damn Republicans in North Denver used such soft lead pencils that it was really hard to erase their votes and fix their ballots."

But at least there's some physical evidence of tampering with paper ballots. (For these electronic wonders, you might find something educational at http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting.)

Edward W. Felton, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, as well as a few of his students, arranged to get a Diebold Accuvote machine. It might tell you something that Diebold refused to supply a machine for their investigation, and so they had to go through a third party.

The Accuvote is a small computer that runs off a memory card which stores its program and data. It is inside a locked compartment.

The researchers found that the key to the locked compartment is a common type - one from a hotel mini-bar could open the machine. Even without the key, one student could pick the lock in 10 seconds. Or just remove some screws and open the machine from the back.

Comments

[ched macquigg]

From a technical standpoint, it's hard to believe that it is impossible to record votes accurately. There must be some other reason that it isn't being done.