Denver Goes "Back to Paper" -- Sort Of

A news article from Denver notes that the city is reversing its experiment from its last election, and going "back to paper."

It's Back to Paper Ballots, Precincts, For This Year's Elections 

This only sort of true. Yes, it's true that Denver is using a voting method that election officials say they're more comfortable with, and that some voters will likely view as more trustworthy. 

Reflection on Independence Day

Yesterday, on July 4th, I took some time to reflect on nearly 400 years of elections in North America, in the hopes of having something meaningful to share in this blog, not about technology, but something fundamental. With little immediate success, I picked up a book, and re-read some email from a friend.

"Privatized" Elections and Internet Programming

Attending and speaking at the Personal Democracy Forum last week, I came across a good phrase, "privatized elections," used to describe the widening role that private companies play in running U.S. government elections.

Real Viruses, Real Voting Systems, Real Concern

The notable election systems snafu news items of the week is a virus infection of Windows-based election systems sold by Premier Systems (Diebold) and used in Florida's Pinellas county.

As a cause for alarm, the incident is pretty low, in that the infection was by ordinary Windows OS viruses, which can cripple a Windows system in a generic way. That's not the much-speculated "targeted malware" that acts to change election data in the cases where the virus gets a foothold on an actual voting system machine.

Arkansas E-Vote Flipping: Force 9 Gale?

It seems like e-voting snafus are like weather: there’s always a bit of a storm somewhere, and now and then you get a big one. Although we can thank our lucky stars that we haven’t had a real hurricane, an electronic equivalent of Florida in 2000, the recent Arkansas vote-flipping snafu might qualify as a force 9 gale.

And because this time it is clear the outcome of the race was also flipped, this case of Arkansas State House District 45 in 2008 might

Uncounted votes in NC, programming error

Today's news of e-voting malfunction underscores my previous point about complexity of voting systems. This time, about 4000 ballots went uncounted in North Carolina's election this week.

Shifting the Heavy Lifting: from E-voting System Vendor to Pollworker

Thanks to election technology expert Noel Runyan, I can explain another reason why the U.S. election systems market is under-served by today’s for-profit vendors of election technology. (And to read up on several other reasons, see Noel’s congressional testimony.)

Can the Federal Government Help Repair the Election System?

I've said before that one factor in U.S. election complexity is the variety of requirements and practices in the balkanized election system. But people still (rightly!) ask, could the federal government do more to help?

Voter ID and e-voting technology

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling onvoter ID high-lighted one of the many twisted issues in election policy. But combine that twistiness with the use of tech for e-voting, and you get some possibilities that are positively torqued -- and OBTW make another case for open source tech in elections. Here's how.

Is Security the Problem for E-Voting?

One of the most vexing frequent issues in e-voting debates is the idea of security vulnerabilities. I don't think that security is *the* problem with actual e-voting systems, but I do think that in-security concerns are a significant problem with the way many people think about how we do e-voting.