SIVACRACY.NET

Voters from at least half a dozen states reported that
touch-screen voting machines had incorrectly recorded their
choices, including for president.

Voters discovered the problems when checking the review screen at
the end of the voting process. They found, to their surprise,
that the machines indicated that they voted for one candidate
when they had voted for another. When voters tried to correct the
problem, the machine often made the same error several times.
While in most cases the situation was reportedly resolved, many
voters remain uneasy about whether the proper vote was ultimately
cast. Meanwhile, voting experts are concerned that other voters
are experiencing the problem, but failing to notice that the
machine is indicating the wrong choice on the "summary" screen.

Election observers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
and Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) reported today that the
problem, which some voting officials initially attributed to
"voter error," is evidently widespread and may even be relatively
common with touch-screen machines. Incorrectly recorded votes
make up roughly 20 percent of the e-voting problems reported
through the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS), an online
database in which volunteers with the Election Protection
Coalition, a coalition of non-partisan election observers
dedicated to preventing voter disenfranchisement, are recording
and tracking voting problems.

For voters, these incidents underscore the need to carefully
review ballots during the final portion of the electronic voting
process. But they also point to the larger issue: using
touch-screen voting systems vulnerable to this kind of error,
combined with poll workers and voters unfamiliar with the new
systems, substantially increases the chances of voter
disenfranchisement.

"We're likely to see these types of problems repeated on Election
Day," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "As a short-term
measure, we strongly encourage voters who use touch-screen voting
machines to proof their ballots at the review stage. But while we
can try to address obvious, visible problems like these, the
problems we really worry about are the ones that the voters and
poll watchers can't see. Often the only you catch these flaws are
through audits - yet most of these machines lack even the most
basic audit feature: a voter-verified paper trail."