Between the 2000 presidential elections and the recent presidential elections, much debate has stirred over the close races and whether or not vote counting was legitimate. There has been much speculation on the method of electronic voting which most states use to cast their ballots. One in three voters were expected to use the electronic machines, and half of those were estimated to be Florida voters. Recent events in Ohio have caused much discussion; electronic votes reportedly added 3, 893 votes to President Bush’s tally. An overall total of over 1,100 problems with the electronic voting system have been reported.
Many problems occurred this election concerning various voting methods. This election many provisional ballots were not counted, soldiers in Iraq did not receive their absentee ballots, and there was a miscounting of votes. There have also been complaints that attendants at the polls were not adequately trained, as well as the malfunctioning of the electronic voting machines.
The miscount of electronic votes in Ohio this election were due to the fact that the twelve-year-old voting machines were not functioning properly. Computer Security experts have also found flaws in the software and the touch screen models of voting machines. Many of the machines do not print paper records of the votes, taking away the possibility for recounts, stopping voters from being assured that their vote was cast correctly. The November 7 edition of New York Times states: “The state relies heavily on punch-card balloting machines of the hanging-chad variety. Voting machines in Ohio failed to register votes for president in 92,000 cases over all this year, a number that includes failure to cast a vote, disallowed double votes and possible counting errors. An electronic voting machine added 3,893 votes to President Bush’s tally in a suburban Columbus precinct that has only 800 voters.”Voting machines caused uproar for voters in New York; many of the machines had broken down with no mechanics to fix them. The state will start using Electronic voting in 2006 and it is already causing many citizens uneasiness. The director of the election board in New York fears that training poll workers for electronic voting will be a difficult task. They work around three times a year and will be administering a “complex set of rules”. During this year’ elections, there were problems nation-wide with poll workers being inadequately trained, many unable to meet the needs of voters. Electronic voting is expected to complicate this process.
New York City has had close to $27 million for ten years to upgrade its voting machines. However, only one third of it has gone to upgrading and the rest of it went to renovating the board of elections office. Had the money gone to upgrading voting conditions, the website and phone lines crashing on Election Day may not have been such a problem.
Many students are concerned with how legitimate this year’s election was. Heather Maher (junior) says, ” I haven’t heard very many rumors about voting problems in New Hampshire, but the problems reported in New York and Ohio worry me. I think about all of those lost votes, or inaccurate votes, and I wonder if we have chosen the right candidate. It’s not fair to the American Public. We need to find a voting system that is stable.”