Computer glitches and political hackers could taint the integrity of future elections, a number of voting experts and Wisconsin legislators fear, four years after paper chads became synonymous with electoral breakdown.
According to CNN.com, at least 50 million Americans will cast votes this November on ATM-like electronic voting machines.
The majority of those machines will record just a digital vote tally without printing out a paper duplicate, said Alan Dechert, president of the nonprofit group Open Voting Consortium. This allows hackers to manipulate electronic vote totals without being tracked and also prohibits the recovery of votes lost due to computer errors, Dechert said.
\By having this as an accepted mode of voting, we have opened the doors to completely rigged elections,"" Dechert said.
Although there have been no successful incidents of electronic vote manipulation as of yet, according to Dechert, computer glitches did disrupt voting in presidential primaries last month. Modem problems stalled vote counting in Maryland and a power surge caused the wrong ballot to appear on half the touchscreens in San Diego County Calif., according to CNN.com.
In light of those developments, the Wisconsin state Assembly passed a bill prohibiting the use of electronic voting machines without a paper trail, but the bill failed to pass the Senate.
""We looked at some of the problems they had out West in this past spring election and we know that there've already been some questions about the electronic technology so we felt that until the technology is better proven or verification can be made about the votes ... then that sort of technology is not what we should use at this time,"" said Kurt Sinatic, spokesperson for state Rep. Stephen Freese, R-Dodgeville, co-sponsor of the bill.
According to an employee of the State Elections Board, electronic voting is more accessible to disabled users and prevents voters from selecting two candidates for one race.
