HBO gives people a chance to re-vote -- and maybe even create a hanging chad

The HBO film Recount premieres this Sunday night (May 25). The film is a fictionalized account of the 2000 presidential election in Florida — famous for the hanging chad.

House Panel OKs "Voting Paper Trail" Bill

I thought that today's news about e-voting and legislation is notable as an example of the way voting technology and policy interact in our unique U.S. voting system.

First, what was Congress working on? Crafting legislation about elections; one bill to authorize payments to states for efforts to put in place paper ballots or paper audits for the November 2008 election, and another that effectively over-rules 21 states' regulations requiring a voter to have a valid "excuse" to qualify for an absentee ballot (a.k.a. vote by mail).

Voters Must Count

ABC News and Facebook are running one of their daily (sometimes hourly) political polls this morning with this question: Is the plan for Michigan Democrats to re-run their primary on June 3 a good idea?

So far its running about 53% to 41% against the idea.

Why Complexity? Look to the Balkans

Many thanks to what Dave Barry would call “alert reader Brandon F.” for posing a question that comes up a lot concerning digital voting. To paraphrase slightly: why not specify and standardize on ballot paper, ballot layout, ballot marking locations in the layout, and scanning systems to automate counting? Why is everyone making this so complex?

California Primaries, Piles of Paper, and Hand Counts

The upcoming California presidential primary is going to be a great real-world source of insight on the perennial question:"What's wrong with paper ballots?"

Of course, paper ballots are a necessary component of elections in most parts of the US, but one variant of that question is about the so-called pure-paper election with hand-marked paper ballots that are counted manually. With this model in mind, people often ask why is voting technology needed at all?