ARE WE READY TO ENTER THE VOTING ELECTRONIC ERA? A LOOK AT THE NOVEMBER 7 ELECTIONS

Can electronic voting machines be set for fraud?

Even though there's no proven evidence of electronic fraud, in a recent poll 2/3 of the population believed hackers could tamper electronic machines, or the machines themselves could deliver some type of mistakes.

The poll showed voters still favor the old fashion paper ballots, or at least having paper verification of their votes.

Fear has raised due to problems that had tainted some electoral results:

Paper 'backup' ballots jammed in the machines (Ohio)

Human error when workers forgot to bring the access cards that activated the machines, forcing voters to wait for hours (Maryland)

Law suit aimed to de-certify an election due to electronic problems (Colorado)

And who could forget Florida in the 2000 Presidential election?

In this era of terrorism, there is always room for a potential hacking, or intentional fraud through manipulation.

The concern is so big that Princeton University conducted several tests with electronic voting machines to prove their potentiality for fraud. Their findings showed that machines are suceptible to viruses that spread from machine to machine and could change the results. Then, without paper proof of voters' choices, there is no way to verify if the votes were really casted the way citizens intended.

Diebold Election Systems (one of the voting machines providers) denied the allegations, arguing that electronic voting machines are never connected to the internet or to each other. Besides, people from both parties are always looking over each other, making it unlikely for somebody to commit fraud. Human error (according to Diebold) was more likely to happen in the old fashion way (putting at risk the results) considering that the same people had to arrive at 5 AM to open the precincts and had to stay there until midnight to count the votes.

For Diebold, such human errors belong now to the past with the improved technology.

In the mean time, the average American, may have to comform with the results and hope for the best. In times when technology seems to have come too soon for quite a few millions still longing for the good, old fashion times, when we only needed a pen, and knew how to cross an X over our favorite candidates.