MONTANA OUTLAWS TOUCH SCREEN VOTING MACHINES

[feelthebreeze]

MONTANA OUTLAWS TOUCH SCREEN VOTING MACHINES

REPRESENTATIVE BRADY WISEMAN, BOZEMAN, MT - I saw your link to the
Accuview story on IRV. I thought you might like to know that here in
Montana, we just outlawed touch screen voting machines. House Bill
297, sponsored by
myself, passed the Montana Legislature by wide margins. It simply
requires that paper ballots be used in all elections. The ballots may
be counted by machine, and may be marked for the voter by a machine,
but we will not allow electronic ballots, with a tiny exception for
handicapped voters.

My profession is software engineering. I was able to convince my
colleagues in the Legislature that touch screen voting machines are
unreliable, badly flawed, insecure, and require massive amounts of
acceptance testing that typically is not done or even thought about.

But the real winner was the suggestion that in a close election, the
candidate on the short end of the count could not examine the ballots
or the voting systems, because they are private property protected as
trade secrets. A blatant appeal to the self interest of elected
officials carried
the day, helped by a two-month recount in a House race last November
and December, not decided until the weekend before the Legislature
convened, that swung the balance of power. Spread the word, we can
kill these machines....

WISEMAN'S BILL
http://laws.leg.state.mt.us/pls/laws05/LAW0210W$BSIV.ActionQuery?P_BILL_NO1=
297&P_BLTP_BILL_TYP_CD=HB&Z_ACTION=Find