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Flash Points
• Stuffed ballot boxes in one Texas precinct allegedly give Lyndon B. Johnson a razor-thin victory over challenger Coke Stevenson in the 1948 Senate primary race.• Eight ballot box lids from the 2001 election are discovered floating in San Francisco Bay. An election official says the dirty lids were scrubbed and left to dry on Fisherman's Wharf.
• Optical scanners pass preelection tests in Napa County, California, but then fail to count more than 6,000 votes.
• Ohio is central to many of these controversies. In August 2003 the CEO of Diebold, based in North Canton, gushes in a Republican fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President." Critics are unmoved when Diebold points out that its election-machines operation is based in Texas and the CEO has no day-to-day control. The gaffe galvanizes the anti-DRE movement, especially after Bush's 2.1 percent victory over Kerry in the state.
• Shortages of electronic machines in the state that cemented President Bush's electoral-college win force Columbus, Ohio, voters to stand in line for more than ten hours in some precincts. Thousands give up and go home without voting. Longtime voters can't vote, because their registrations have been purged. In Youngstown, 25 machines transfer an unknown number of votes from the Kerry to the Bush column. Problems are worse in Democratic-leaning precincts. Later, Cuyahoga County scraps most DREs and replaces them with paper ballots and optical scanners. Long lines continue to be a problem in primary voting this year.
• Only 369 votes separate Democrat Christine Jennings from winner Vern Buchanan, a Republican, in a November 2006 Congressional race. But a recount shows 18,000 undervotes-ballots with every race marked except this one. DRE opponents argue that the touch screen machines malfunctioned, partly due to the Florida humidity. Jennings's election challenge is dismissed.
Forward Thinking
• Better machines-DREs with paper trails, and optical scanners that will spit back messed-up ballots to voters for a do-over-may restore voter confidence.
• Solid vote verification may also help: Princeton Professor Edward Felten is researching a Las Vegas-style vote-checking system in which dice or lottery balls are used to randomly select precincts to conduct hand recounts once the polls are closed.
• Rep. Rush Holt (D., New Jersey) introduced a bill last year that would reimburse states and localities that switch to paper-ballot systems. It's still making its way through Congress. (A similar bill of Holt's was blocked by Republicans in April.)
• Make Voting Work and electionline.org, two projects funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, are researching the feasibility of training poll workers online.
• Younger, more computer-literate poll workers who aren't fazed by printer jams and computer crashes are being recruited.
• Electronic poll books, instead of reams of computer paper, help speed up lines.
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