Reply #15: ZDNet: Standards to stimulate e-voting?

[rumpel]

By Candace Lombardi, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: October 6, 2006, 9:17 AM PT

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The government was quick to trust the Internet with tax returns, but it still has not managed to organize a paperless voting system. What's the holdup?
Many voting citizens, whether they consider themselves red, blue or green, have been asking that question since the 2000 election shed light on how inconsistent, and often low-tech, the voting systems are in the United States.
Standardization of data fields, interoperability between counties and states, and an unwillingness on the part of local municipalities to embrace change are some of the major obstacles, according to panelists at the Voter Identification/Registration Conference, hosted by the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday and Friday.
Politicians and election officials have been scrambling to put together high-tech solutions, but the potential for voter fraud, coupled with the exposure of security flaws in e-voting systems and voter databases, has slowed down the conversion.
The panel put aside legal issues concerning e-voting machines and, instead, concentrated on how technology could be used to ensure that electronic voter registration and identification is valid and consistently maintained.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6123416.html