E-Voting Recommendations Problematic

Overhype

from the is-it-that-hard? dept

It certainly took them long enough. Given that electronic voting machines were all the rage in the last election — despite plenty of serious questions about their reliability and accuracy, you’d think that maybe the government would have come out with more detailed guidelines before the election, rather than after. Anyway, they finally did come out with their guidelines and they don’t seem to be all that useful. Most importantly, they’re just guidelines. No one actually has to follow them. Second, it doesn’t say that voting machines should have a paper audit trail — which still seems like a pretty important component, especially considering stories about how some voting machines’ electronic audit didn’t actually match up with the votes (isn’t that what an audit is supposed to do in the first place?). Of course, one interesting thing to note is that, based on these guidelines, it appears the popular Diebold machines that so many election officials didn’t want to give up, wouldn’t actually meet these (somewhat weak) standards.