Electronic voting machines are more accurate than ever, according to the electronic voting machine vendors. Yet, the 2008 season of Democratic and Republican primaries was full of examples of electronic voting machine failures that threatened to affect the election.Electronic voting machines were supposed to be the answer to the hanging
chads and human error that threatened to undo the democratic process. But eight
years and billions of dollars after the infamous Florida
recount, electronic voting is proving to be just as unreliable.
The 2008 primary elections offered five prime examples of electronic voting
machine failures with potential impact on the election:
FLORIDA
In the Aug. 26 primary in Palm Beach
County, several votes in a judicial
contest disappeared during a recount, then reappeared in a second and third
recount, flipping the outcome to a different winner each time.
SOUTH CAROLINA
In the Jan. 19 Republican presidential primary, touch-screen machines in 80
percent of precincts temporarily failed, and a number of precincts ran out of
paper ballots and sent voters to cast provisional ballots at other precincts.
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here to read more about the pitfalls of electronic voting and how to address
them.
OHIO
In the March 4 primary, votes in at least 11 counties were
"dropped" when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers due to
a software flaw.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
In the Sept. 9 primary, three different counts produced three different vote
totals, with thousands of "phantom votes" appearing in the first two
counts.
NEW JERSEY
Union County officials reported some of the electronic voting
machines gave incorrect party vote totals in the Feb. 5 presidential primary
election.