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Malfunction, Not Malfeasance: Article Describes The Problems With Electronic Voting Machines

January 5, 2008

Ever since the 2000 U.S Presidential election, when flawed paper ballots may have helped propel George W. Bush to the Presidency, political advocates and ordinary citizens have expressed vocal, public distrust in the technology behind electronic voting machines introduced to help solve the issues surrounding vote counting.

The distrust reached a crescendo in 2004, when a series of assumptions caused many on the left side of the political spectrum to conclude that enough votes were "stolen" from John Kerry in Ohio and Florida to tilt the election to Bush.

Although this reasoning proved to be questionable at best, a consensus has arisen in the U.S. that electronic voting machines are vulnerable. Vulnerable not so much to hacking but to malfunctions and glitches that could prove determinative in close elections.

This issue is more technical than ideological, more in the territory of malfunction than malfeasance.

To gain an understanding of why this is so, I heartily recommend you read the online version of an article just out in this Sunday's New York Times magazine.

The article is entitled, Can You Count On Voting Machines. Expertly and objectively researched by Clive Thompson, it is a must read for every U.S. voter. 

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