voting machines

[wil]

Listened to quite the discussion on voting machines the other day.

They were testing them all, the table top index cards, the stand behind the curtain pull the lever, the variety of computer models.

They tested over 1500 people on various machines from all walks of life.

Overall the touch screens were determined most user friendly.

Touch screen machines with verifiable paper printout made the folks most happy that their vote was counted correctly.

Lots of different statistics based on a bunch of questions and comparisons to race, education, age, number of times voting, gender and income.

All quite interesting, but by far the most telling...and most shocking in my naive mind.

The best machines with the most accuracy (people were given a sheet to tell them who to vote for) the most accurate machines were the touch screens....but ....but they were 97% accurate!! 3% miss votes...other machines had upto 5% misvotes....shocking...

3% off, THREE PERCENT....what was the last election won by?? How many states were within 3% margin of error?? This includes rechecking paper ballots!!!

Why, because people can't vote. People get confused. Over half the errors were voting for the person above or the person below..(when voting for one)

When voting for three or a number of judicial candidates or some such thing, unless the machine controlled the vote they often voted for more than allowed, which by rules tosses out all their votes. (in that category)

3% is it just me?