Pennsylvania Voters Claim E-Voting Machines Inconsistent and Untrustworthy

By Katie Hauser

Published on August 30, 2006

The “hanging chad" debacle in Florida during the 2000 presidential election led to an effort to computerize voting in order to eliminate human error. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, allocating $2.6 billion for the purchase of voting machines, the majority of which were direct recording electronic voting units, or DREs.

Plaintiffs argue that the machines, used in 58 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, violate the election code in that they leave behind no paper records that can be counted or tallied in the event of an audit or recount. Furthermore, computer scientists have shown that hackers can manipulate totals in some of the DRE models.

The nine counties that do not use the DREs use optical scanning machines to count ballots that voters mark by hand; plaintiffs say these systems should be implemented statewide.

Leslie Amoros, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State, argues that the systems have been certified and can use computer images to reconstruct results. Plaintiffs counter with examples of votes being lost by these machines in the May primaries in Allegheny and Center counties, as well as in Berks County in May 2005.

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