From Slashdot:
Finland piloted a fully electronic voting system in municipal elections last weekend. Due to a usability glitch, 232 votes, or about 2% of all electronic votes were lost. The results of the election may have been affected, because the seats in municipal assemblies are often decided by margins of a few votes. Unfortunately, nobody knows for sure, because the Ministry of Justice didn’t see any need to implement a voter-verified paper record. The ministry was, of course, duly warned about a fully electronic voting system, but the critique was debunked as ’science fiction.’ There is now discussion about re-arranging the affected elections. Thanks go to the voting system providers, Scytl and TietoEnator, for the experience.
Sometimes when focusing on the biggie elections like the presidential or gubernatorial, we forget that the elections that are most likely to be affected by Tennessee’s sucky voting machines are the really, really close local elections. See: Tim Barnes v. Rosalind Kurita.
Good point about Kurita-Barnes. This is one of the many reasons why it was impossible to know who really won that election. No paper trail, no way to run a legit recount, no way to know for sure that it wasn’t voter error or fraud or anything else.
You can say what you want about the solution arrived at by the TNDP executive committee, but giving the decision over to the local county parties was a little like giving it to the Electoral College to decide. Not a bad move, though someone’s going to be very disappointed regardless.
You’d think that after Bush v. Gore, we’d be further along in TN when it comes to protecting the rights of voters and the legitimacy of elections.