Winds of Change Newsletter, February 2007 See sidebar for table of contents
Security Of Electronic Voting Condemned
by Cameron W. Barr, Washington Post,
Dec. 1, 2006
Paperless electronic voting machines used (in) much
of the country "cannot be made secure," according to draft
recommendations issued this week by a federal agency that advises the
U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
The assessment by the National Institute of Standards
and Technology, is the most sweeping condemnation of such voting systems
by a federal agency.
In a report hailed by critics of electronic voting,
NIST said voting systems should allow election officials to recount
ballots independently from a machines software. NIST endorses
"optical-scan" systems in which voters mark paper ballots that are read
by a computer and electronic systems that print a paper summary of each
ballot, which voters review and elections officials save for recounts.
|
