Washblog

You say, the state party didn't weigh in "on whether King County should have paper ballots", but I thought King County was on the cusp of all mail-in voting?

Surely that means they'll have to use paper ballots, just by the nature of the process?

by robespierrette on Mon Jul 02, 2007 at 11:48:42 AM PST

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Yes,King County Elections anticipates 42,000 voters at the Regional Voting Centers. Many of these people will be people who had not recieived their mail in ballot.  In the 2006 election, the WA State Democratic Party operated a voter hot line. Many of the calls were from people who had not recieved their mail in ballot. Such calls continued to come in up until 11:00 pm the night before the election.  

Some people feel comfortable with touch screen voting machines so long as there is a "paper trail."  I do not, especially when 42,000 people will be voting on them. The Election Science Institute of San Francisco,CA investigated touch screen voting failures in Cuyahoga County,OH.  ESI audited the Diebold touch screens used in the Ohio primary and discovered that the machine vote counts were unreliable. They found that there were more votes registered on VVPAT summaries than were registered electronically. Also, totals from memory cards did not match the DRE archive totals.  All of these numbers should match, and they did not. ESI concluded that the severe internal inconsistencies in the electronic vote total reports "cast serious doubt on all election outcomes reported by these machines - that is, whichever of the differing reports is deemed official."

We should not rely on touch screens at the voting centers. There are alternatives. It is not appropriate to have these people vote on unreliable and insecure machines. Using these machines jeapardizes our presidential election.

by raincity calling on Tue Jul 03, 2007 at 01:24:14 PM PST

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