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E-voting: What Will it Take For a Smooth Election?

Despite progress in e-voting technology, Tuesday's U.S. election saw scattered reports of problems with some systems

By Grant Gross, IDG News Service (Washington Bureau)

In the rush to adopt new voting technology following problems with paper ballots in the 2000 elections, many states adopted unproven technology, he added. While most states that purchased touch-screen voting machines have since moved to include printouts with those machines, other states have switched to optical scan machines.

Three states, Maryland, Tennessee and Colorado, will move to some kind of paper backup in coming elections. But that still leaves 15 states where touch-screen machines would be used without paper backups, and replacing or reconfiguring those machines would cost millions of dollars.

The U.S. government is facing major challenges in coming years, even if Democrats generally sympathetic to voting reform issues add to their majorities in Congress, Spafford said. "We have so many other pressing national concerns that are going to require attention first," he said. "We have so many issues, I wonder whether this will bubble up high enough to get addressed soon. It needs addressing."

Copyright 2009 IDG News Service, International Data Group Inc. All rights reserved.

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