VOTING MACHINE-- here, Sequoia Voting Systems's AVC Edge--is
fairly typical of direct record electronic (DRE) voting machines
on the market. Voters enter their votes via a touch-screen
interface. Image: COURTESY OF SEQUOIA VOTING SYSTEMS Voting may
seem like a simple activity--cast ballots, then count them.
Complexity arises, however, because voters must be registered
and votes must be recorded in secrecy, transferred securely and
counted accurately. We vote rarely, so the procedure never
becomes a well-practiced routine. One race between two
candidates is easy. Half a dozen races, each between several
candidates, and ballot measures besides--that's harder. This
complex process is so vital to our democracy that problems with
it are as noteworthy as engineering faults in a nuclear power
plant. Votes can be lost at every stage of the process. The
infamous 2000 U.S. presidential election dramatized some very
basic, yet systemic, flaws concerning who got to vote and how
the votes were counted. An estimated four m