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Check out Accupoll
| Status: |
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For Immediate Release |
| Date: |
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February 3, 2003 10:40 AM EST |
| Attn: |
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All Media |
| Contact: |
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Frank Wiebe
(949) 200-4000 x102
E-mail: fwiebe@accupoll.com |
| TICKER: |
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ACUP |
IRVINE, Calif. -- (BUSINESSWIRE) February 3, 2003 -- Voters
have made their intent clear -- voters prefer to review their votes when the votes have been recorded on paper.
The approval of a voter verifiable printed paper record produced simultaneously
with casting an electronic ballot won by a landslide, in separate surveys conducted in California and Pennsylvania.
In a recent California telephone survey, 80% of active voters randomly polled said
they would have more trust in an election if they could see their vote recorded on paper as part of the process of casting
a ballot on an electronic voting station.
Pennsylvania voters who participated in shadow voting with AccuPoll (OCT BB:ACUP)
during the November 5th general election agreed after using the AccuPoll equipment. The AccuPoll voting station has a touch
screen but prints a paper record of the voter's cast ballot (a "Proof of Vote") for the voter to review.
This voter verified paper record can be audited against the cast electronic ballots
to insure the integrity and accuracy of the election and hand counted in the event of a recount. Voters who tested AccuPoll
were asked to complete a survey on their experience for the County Commissioners. More than 80% of the voters who tested the
new AccuPoll equipment voiced their approval of the voter verified paper record and the ease of the overall voting experience.
Such survey results are a vote of confidence for the future of election reform,
because first generation touch screen systems currently being adopted have not won public confidence. Everyone agrees, it's
time for a change, but pure touch screen systems are not being embraced by the public. Voters report confusion with the touch
screens and express little confidence that their choices were actually recorded properly in invisible electronic files.
Professional studies, such as those of Dr. Rebecca Mercuri (Bryn Mawr College)
have demonstrated that touch screens can fail in ways that cause them to improperly record votes. Experience in live elections
in 2002 in Florida and Texas revealed numerous incidents of failures to record or tally votes from pure touch screen systems.
AccuPoll is proud to offer a new generation of voting equipment that combines the
latest touch screen usability and the conclusive voter verified paper records preferred by voters and required for auditable
results.
More...
The top priority of all local election bureaus across the country should be to have bi-annual check of the local voter-registration
rolls.
The Motor Voter legislation of 1993 merely created a category of voter called inactive. However, many state laws
enable local election officials to "monitor" the registration rolls, and should an elector be shown to have moved to another
county, state, or local voting district, the elector can be notified of potential removal from the voter registration listing.
After the elector is notified via a mailing, there is another process to remove the elector if a return form is not received.
If a "mistake" is made, and a qualified and legitimate elector is removed from the voter registration rolls, the elector
has the obligation to go and seek reinstatement by simply going and re-registering to vote. This shouldn't be difficult,
now many states have mail-in registration.
An important part of the election process is at the front-end: mail-ins and walk-ins, and same day voter registrants,
all must be checked out to ensure a clean voter registration list. We must be guaranteed to have a system that
has a resigistration roll that is fraud and tamper proof, just as we must be guaranteed to have a voting machine system
that is unrigged.
After reviewing much of the information from several websites, I've come to consider that what we need is a two-pronged
verification process if touch-screen machines are used.
We should have a voter-verified paper ballot, and we should have a way for the voter to see a printout of his-her vote
as will be recorded by the machine.
Possibly there could also be a way for a voter to receive a pin number which will still retain the secrecy of the voter's
ballot.
In this way, the voter would have confirmation that the machine has recorded a vote for the voter's number accurately.
More suggestions found across the internet.
Phyllis Schlafly
September 25, 2002
Some voters complained that the touch-screen machines selected the wrong candidates. In August, national voting machine
expert Rebecca Mercuri demonstrated how it's possible that a voter using these new voting machines could touch two candidates'
names at once and register a vote for a third candidate.
Some claim the South Florida problems were the result of operator error, not mechanical malfunction. There were too few
poll workers, inadequate training of poll workers, and failure to provide checklists for the operation. Some poll workers
quit because they were intimidated and frustrated by the new machines.
The problem in 2000 wasn't the punch card ballots anyway. I voted a punch card ballot in November 2000 and didn't have
any problem with it, and the sign on the ballot box in my precinct clearly told voters to "Remove your hanging chads."
We should not use any voting machine unless it prints out a receipt confirming that the machine registered your votes for
the candidates you chose. If the machine doesn't do that, the technology is subject to all kinds of fraud and we should junk
the voting machines altogether to go back to paper ballots.
More...
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