Why touchscreen voting machines?

[Ed Watkins]

O.k ignore the rant, but this has been bugging me.

Why use @$#%ing touch screen voting machines for something as critical as an election? They are prone to "drifting" and need to be re-calibrated regularly. Two qualities not suited to an election vote.

Surely a better system would be something closer to an ATM machine, with physical buttons placed next to a digital display of the candidates names, and giving you a paper reciept print out of your vote.
That way no confusion, and no "slipped" votes.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

I always like pencil and paper for voting... Touchscreens are great if you want to fiddle the vote.

 

[Joseph Ward]

I dont think internet or electronic is the way to go for voting, without some paper backup at least.

 

[Matthew Rogers]

The machines I have voted on here the last few times are scroll wheel computers. Yes, scroll wheel. It's not the worst design, but I think an up and down button would have been better.

Oh well, we are switching to a paper ballot that will be scanned starting the next election. Of course, since everything is being put on a computer in the end, fraud could still happen (the same with paper ballots too come to think of it....)

Matthew

 

[Lexicon]

Because every greasy finger means one more possible vote gone to the wrong candidate.

 

[PAUL STAMER]

Brazil was the first country to use electronic voting machines, we´ve been voting on those since 1996 and the results are known in a few hours after their closing, we have over 120 million people voting here, basic design but very free of trouble

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Yes, it's not that electronic voting is inherently bad, but that many of the methods used can be very bad due to bad design, lack of audit trail, bad security practices etc.

Graeme