Testing the vote

You know, I think I've been an e-voter since I moved out here and reaffirmed my civic duty to vote. And I just never thought about what would happen should a vote need to be contested. Knowing the political affiliations out here and the hard way they slant has made the point relatively moot up until now.

However the more I read stories about errant e-voting machines, the more worried I become, especially with Nevada having the potential to be close this year:

When Sequoia Voting Systems demonstrated its new paper-trail electronic voting system for state Senate staffers in California last week, the company representative got a surprise when the paper trail failed to record votes that testers cast on the machine.

That was bad news for the voting company, whose paper-trail, touch-screen machine will be used for the first time next month in Nevada's state primary. The company advertises that its touch-screen machines provide "nothing less than 100 percent accuracy."

It was good news, however, for computer scientists and voting activists, who have long held that touch-screen machines are unreliable and vulnerable to tampering, and therefore must provide a physical paper-based audit trail of votes.

These are the machines we trust the gift of democracy with. Machines that fail consistently to ensure our vote is counted. I realize no system is perfect, but I would hate for this election to be decided by a programming glitch or computer error. Our votes should never be guinea pigs for an election experiment.

Insist on paper trails for e-voting machines in your area. Start by signing a petition. Stand up for you vote.