In case you were wondering, Travis County’s foray into electronic voting this November isn’t expected to suffer the same problems that turned Florida’s gubernatorial primary into a fiasco. Earlier this summer, county officials rejected a touch-screen system like that used in the Sunshine State, deeming it too sensitive. Instead, the County opted for a more durable dial-and-button machine, produced by Austin manufacturer Hart Intercivic. And rather than diving head-first into the e-voting pool like Florida, Travis Co. clerk Dana DeBeauvoir is cautiously dipping her toe first during October and November’s early voting, waiting until next spring’s City Council elections to fully implement the system. (With the exception of Pct. 131 — Cherrywood, typically voting at Asbury United Methodist Church — which will go completely electronic this Nov. 5.) The rest of us will use optical-scan (fill-in-the-bubble) ballots on E-Day.
Some observers are worried about the lack of physical ballots to leave a paper trail. In a Sept. 12 National Public Radio report on the adoption of e-voting in Brazil, Rebecca Mercuri, an American computer science professor who specializes in the security of electronic voting, said, “We’ve had machines like that here in the United States that have generated zeroes at the end of the day. Zeroes were printed out on the end results.”
This article appears in September 20 • 2002.