These challenges has slowed the current trend in adoption of electronic voting systems. States and counties around the country are now questioning the intelligence in spending tens of millions of dollars on a system that has proven to be unreliable at best. All of the glitches and voting anomalies that have come up over the recent years caused Americans, especially in geographic regions like Florida where the problems have occurred, to lose faith in these high-tech voting systems.
In fact, faith has dwindled so significantly, in February, some Broward County citizens, along with members from nine other Florida counties, banded together to create the first citizen exit poll in America. Nonprofessional data gatherers recorded votes as voters left the polls.
Approximately 20 people, including Democrats, Republicans, and at least one Green Party member, made up Project Vote Count and manned tables outside official polling places.
These tables were run just like an official election, with voters filling out 'affidavits' that were then placed into sealed boxes. Approximately 75% of voters in the five precincts that were targeted participated. The results were disturbingly dissimilar to those reported in the official poll. Whereas McCain received...
Clinton was touted as receiving 59.5% of the Democratic vote, officially, yet the exit poll results showed only 45% (Newton, 2008). Results, such as this, have further exacerbated America's dwindling faith in a change in systems that is being forced on.
In the end, upgrading to an electronic voting system in America is one question that many counties and states still has to face. One of the more popular systems is a touchscreen system made by ES&S, the iVotronic system.
States like Florida,
North Carolina and Texas have decided to use this system; however, it has been plagued with problems.
These problems have shaken the faith of voters in changing to a new system, making hanging chads look like only a minor inconvenience. For this reason, voters have begun to take matters into their own hands, further demonstrating that still these problems have not been resolved.
References
Electronic voting machine information sheet. (17 Aug 2004). Retrieved March 28, 2008, at http://w2.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20040818_ess_ivotronic_v0.8.pdf.
Newton, E. (7 Feb 2008). Tally against the machine. Broward-Palm Beach New Times. Retrieved March 28, 2008, from Academic OneFile database.
Songini, M. (18 Apr 2005). E-voting may face recall in Florida County: IT snafus lead to look at optical scanning. Computerworld, 39(16). Retrieved March 28, 2008, from Academic OneFile database.
America's Voting System
