HAVA (2002) was designed to give money to the states to update voting systems and to retire any legacy mechanical lever machines as well punch card machines. No more hanging chads!
President Bush was slow to appoint members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Pressure to meet Congressional deadlines had states scrambling. Although technically the term "electronic voting" encompasses punch cards and optical scan systems, colloquially it has come to mean a subset of "Direct Recording Electronic" machines that are operated by a touchscreen.
The money led to rapid adoption. In 2004, almost 30% of the registered voters in the U.S. used some type of DRE voting system; only about 8% had done so in 1996.
But with rapid adoption came challenges. Initially, vendors and election officials believed that no paper record of the vote was required. Without intent, the voting system was back in the mechanical lever era, where voters had to "trust" that the equipment worked and that all data were properly recorded as transmitted by the voter. Tales of non-functioning machines, machines that wouldn't register the right vote and massive undervoting in Florida pulled the plug on technology optimists.
The symbol of everything wrong with DRE machinery is Diebold, now known as Premier Election Solutions. Diebold is a major provider of Automated Teller Machines (ATM) but the issues of voting security are different -- and some would argue more challenging -- than those around banking.
Also, see Diebold v The Bloggers (Harvard Berkman Center) and The Problem With Electronic Voting Machines
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
- Tom Stoppard
President Bush was slow to appoint members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Pressure to meet Congressional deadlines had states scrambling. Although technically the term "electronic voting" encompasses punch cards and optical scan systems, colloquially it has come to mean a subset of "Direct Recording Electronic" machines that are operated by a touchscreen.
The money led to rapid adoption. In 2004, almost 30% of the registered voters in the U.S. used some type of DRE voting system; only about 8% had done so in 1996.
But with rapid adoption came challenges. Initially, vendors and election officials believed that no paper record of the vote was required. Without intent, the voting system was back in the mechanical lever era, where voters had to "trust" that the equipment worked and that all data were properly recorded as transmitted by the voter. Tales of non-functioning machines, machines that wouldn't register the right vote and massive undervoting in Florida pulled the plug on technology optimists.
The symbol of everything wrong with DRE machinery is Diebold, now known as Premier Election Solutions. Diebold is a major provider of Automated Teller Machines (ATM) but the issues of voting security are different -- and some would argue more challenging -- than those around banking.
Also, see Diebold v The Bloggers (Harvard Berkman Center) and The Problem With Electronic Voting Machines
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
- Tom Stoppard