What an exciting election… I sure hope you voted!
Optical scanners were brought into some states polls and over 1 BILLION dollars was poured into the new voting machines. On voting day, almost 90% of voters cast their votes optically or electronically also known as DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) devices. Only 11 counties out of 3,117 will be using punch cards for the election.
There are some downfalls to this new electronic voting, as with everything. Some machines crashed, memory cards will be unable to be read, touch screens will flip votes, and the software will have glitches as well. However, the University of Missouri study in 2004 that for punch- cards ballots, the error was just an impressive 1%.
In 5 states in America, there were problems reported with optical scanners. The states were Florida, S. Carolina, Ohio, Washington DC, and New Jersey.
Also, please take a look at the last website to see 10 ways to unfairly influence an election!
Tags: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/Optical-Scanners-Winning-War-of-Voting-Machines/, http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Electronic-Voting-Failures-in-2008/
