The complaint asserts that 10 percent to 20 percent of the direct-recording electronic voting machines used in Pennsylvania are likely to fail on Nov. 4. The machines will be used in 34 percent of counties around the United States. Are they really so bad that they fail one out of five times? Full Story »
Posted by Mike LaBonte
This has good links, and gets right to the point. I like that the author uses calculated error probabilities to gain insight. But claiming both that failure rates are unknown, and that certification requires a maximum allowable failure rate doesn't make sense.
The article seems to attack the statements in the Pennsylvania lawsuit, but that is a bit of a straw man. And the criteria used is sloppy. The voting process should be well over 99% reliable and 99% accurate. This story and the suit only address a minimal state of functional reliablity, and not the accuracy question. The secret corporate software code and poor acceptance testing should disqualify any use of electronic voting machines and disqualify any use of secretive central vote counting machines.
See also www.blackboxvoting.org for voting machine and process information. (the NewsTrust link seems not to work for the site, for some reason.)
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