With 6 months to go, panel takes aim at e-voting bugs

[Freddie Stubbs]

Wednesday, May 05, 2004
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff
Some 50 million Americans will cast their ballots for president on electronic voting machines this fall. But are those machines secure? A new federal agency is racing to find out, despite few dollars or technical advisers and no real enforcement powers.

The Election Assistance Commission settled into its own office just last month, went online last week and doesn't even have updated stationery.

"We're not going to repair every potential flaw in voting in America by November'04," conceded DeForest "Buster" Soaries Jr., a former New Jersey secretary of state and chairman of the bipartisan commission.

Created by Congress to prevent a repeat of the controversies that marred the 2000 election, the commission today hears testimony for the first time from vendors of electronic touch-screen machines and their critics.

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