Miscounts, Changed Votes, No Paper Trail: Is Electronic Voting a Threat to

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Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts swept all four Southern Democratic primaries yesterday, winning about 77 percent of the votes in Florida and Mississippi and more than 65 percent in Louisiana and Texas. Many of the people that headed to the polls yesterday used electronic voting machines for the first time to cast their vote.

And in the upcoming presidential election, millions more American voters are projected to use electronic voting machines. But concerns over security flaws in voting machines have sparked wide-ranging public debate.

In one case, a special election to fill Florida state House seat 91, 134 Broward County voters managed to use 2-year-old touch-screen elecronic voting equipment without casting votes for any candidate.

Already, malfunctioning software has caused confusion or possibly faulty vote tallies in races across the country and the lack of a paper trail to record votes has failed to provide a way for a meaningful recount may be conducted.

Now for the first time, international monitors will be in the U.S. to make sure votes are cast and counted correctly. Members of the Catholic peace movement Pax Christi announced this week that they will post monitors at polling places around Florida during the Nov. 2 general election.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/10/1537250