Crash and re-boot

The polls go up, the polls go down and there are still more than three weeks to go: time for any amount of sleaze or terror to influence the voters.

The polls go up, the polls go down and there are still more than three weeks to go: time for any amount of sleaze or terror to influence the voters. But it is quite possible that America8217;s mid-term elections on November 7th will produce a close result, not just in the House of Representatives, where it has long been predicted, but in the Senate too. At which point things could get fraught.

The problem is voting machines. Not the ones with hole-punches and their chads, hanging, swinging and dimpled. Since the debacle of 2000 in Florida federal money to the tune of several billion dollars has been lavished on replacing them. Unfortunately, many have been replaced with new ones that may be even worse. In a close election the prospect of just a handful of the 435 House seats or one or two of the 33 Senate seats at stake being furiously challenged in court is all too plausible. Like the presidency in 2000, the colour of Congress could have to be decided by lawyers.

How could this have happened? Mainly because lots of states and counties went for touch-screen devices, very like ATMs, instead of a much better alternative, optical scanners that count votes marked by hand on paper ballots, rather like lottery forms or multiple-choice exam papers. The good thing about scanners is that the original ballot is by definition available for re-counting. With touch-screens, it isn8217;t. Fortunately, more than half of America8217;s 3,000-odd counties have opted for scanners. But about a third have chosen the touch-screens8230;

Elsewhere, there have been horror stories of votes failing to register or upload, of memory-cards going missing, and of machines crashing and losing stored votes. Only a few such cases can damage confidence badly: and crashes, at the least, cause huge delays.

The solutions are not hard to find: a wholesale switch to paper ballots and optical scanners; more training for election officials; and open access to machine software. But it is too late for any of that this time 8212; and that is a scandal.

Excerpted from 8216;The Economist8217;, October 12