Communications of the ACM
States Ditch Electronic Voting Machines
Concerns about e-voting systems will result in nearly 70 percent of voters expected to cast paper ballots in tomorrow's U.S. mid-term elections.
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Nearly 70 percent of voters are expected to cast paper ballots this week more than a decade after concerns about paper ballots caused a major national push for electronic voting in the United States.
Many states and municipalities are abandoning the use of e-voting systems because the machines they purchased in the early 2000s using federal funds are now more than a decade old and are wearing out and there is no money available to replace them, says Carnegie Mellon University professor Michael Shamos.
About half of the states that had adopted electronic voting are now moving back to paper. Verified Voting president Pamela Smith says although the issue has been raised in Congress, it is extremely unlikely further federal funds will be forthcoming to maintain e-voting machines in lieu of another major voting scandal such as the furor over certain paper ballots in the 2000 presidential election that drove the push for the original federal funding.
Although the initial performance of e-voting machines was lackluster and security concerns have persisted, Shamos says they generally have performed well for the last several years.
He expects the next step in e-voting will be a method for enabling citizens to vote using their cellphones.
From The Hill
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