June 28, 2005

"Alameda weighing whether to invest in paper-based optical scanning system"

"It's shopping time for elections officials, the moment to buy the means of democratic choice for the next congressional and presidential elections. And some of the nation's largest jurisdictions — Los Angeles, Chicago and greater Miami — are headed toward voting on paper.

"Could it be a sign of things to come? I'm not sure," said Sean Greene, research director for the nonpartisan reform group, Electionline.org.

A real test of whether the nation's big urban places are moving away from electronic voting could come today in Alameda County as supervisors consider a voting system upgrade.

The same county supervisors who three years ago spent

$12 million on Diebold touch-screen voting machines and turned the county into a West Coast e-voting pioneer are weighing whether to invest more heavily or trade in for a paper-based optical scanning system.

That makes this morning's hearing a battlefield, with Texas-based Diebold Election Systems sending top executives to keep their foothold here and a coalition of e-voting critics arguing the company and its products are not trustworthy."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at June 28, 2005 09:20 AM