Eugene Volokh reports on the latest troubles with electronic voting machines in California.
From this article:
State and county officials were dismayed last week to learn that Diebold Elections Systems Inc. altered the software running in Alameda County's touchscreen voting machines yet neither submitted it for state testing nor even notified state authorities of the change.
And from this article:
School Board member Rita S. Thompson (R), who lost a close race to retain her at-large seat, said yesterday that the new computers might have taken votes from her. Voters in three precincts reported that when they attempted to vote for her, the machines initially displayed an "x" next to her name but then, after a few seconds, the "x" disappeared.
In response to Thompson's complaints, county officials tested one of the machines in question yesterday and discovered that it seemed to subtract a vote for Thompson in about "one out of a hundred tries," said Margaret K. Luca, secretary of the county Board of Elections.
Ouch. Of course, this raises a question I've always had: what happened when the current voting technologies were first introduced, replacing even older systems of voting? (This description of the history of voting technology only mentions some controversies.) I imagine that there must have been some outcry then as well, and certainly some problems with implementation.