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.)