Elections Officials Say Electronic Voting Machines Flaws at Polls Will Remain in November
Ian Urbina of the New York Times reports that we still have some serious problems with our voting equipment:
Flaws in voting machines used by millions of people will not be fixed in time for the presidential election because of a government backlog in testing the machines’ hardware and software, officials say.
The flaws, which have cast doubt on the ability of some machines to provide a consistent and reliable vote count, were supposed to be addressed by the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that oversees voting. But commission officials say they will not be able to certify that flawed machines are repaired by the November election, or provide software fixes or upgrades, because of a backlog at the testing laboratories the commission uses.
Why do we have to settle for flawed machines this November? There’s still plenty of time to print paper ballots and sharpen those pencils.