Electronic Voting Problems

Electronic Voting Problems with Electronic Voting

Introduction to Electronic Voting Problems

Scientific concerns about the reliability of electronic vote tallying were raised early on, in a 1975 report by voting technology consultant Roy Saltman at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology. These findings were expanded to include DREs in a 1988 report by Saltman. Among the problems that Saltman identified were a lack of audit trails; poor design of computer programs; vendor-supplied computer software programs that were unavailable for scrutiny; incomplete and poorly implemented administrative procedures; lack of knowledge on the part of election administrators; and the possibility of undiscoverable fraud.

Each of these items continues to be at issue in the controversies over electronic voting and tabulation. With regard to DREs, Saltman wrote, “The voter is given some reason to believe that the desired choices have been entered correctly into the temporary storage, but no independent proof can be provided to the voter that the choices have, in fact, been entered correctly for the purpose of summarizing those choices with all others to produce vote totals.”” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about Electronic Voting Problems in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Electronic Voting Problems

In this Section

Election, Voter Registration, Electoral Systems, Election Types, How Voters Decide, Electoral Realignments, Electorate (including Electorate Historical, Electorate Gender, Electorate Race and Social Position, Electorate Property and Poll Tax and Residence) and Electronic Voting (including Electronic Voting Origins and Electronic Voting Problems)