Many thanks to the folks who put this issue on the diary rescue last week. Many more thanks to the Kossacks who have signed on to the action alert.
To recap: New Jersey's legislature passed a law in mid-2005 that required voter-verifiable paper records on voting machines by January 2008. The Division of Elections chose to recommend retrofitting aging, unreliable Sequoia Advantage machines with printers, instead of purchasing a more reliable system of paper ballots, optical scanners, and ballot markers for voters with disabilities. Guess what? The printers don't work, and the Legislature extended the deadline to June of this year. Then a couple of weeks ago, the Legislature extended the deadline again to January 2009. Almost three years of delay and dysfunction, culminating in 15 more unverifiable electoral votes. There is something you can do: urge Governor Corzine to veto the delay legislation, A2229. Follow the flip for links.
Click here if you live in New Jersey.
Click here if you live outside New Jersey. This message is tailored to say "hey, I don't live in your state, but we all depend on your state's voting process, so please do the right thing."
This effort comes at a disturbing but opportune time. You may have heard about the anomalies reported in the electronic records of the Sequoia voting machines in New Jersey's February 5 primary, and Sequoia's attempts to stop an analysis of the problem by Princeton computer scientists. If not, read here and here. Princeton University computer scientist Edward Felten has an excellent summary of the problem at his blog, Freedom to Tinker.
Mercer County Superior Court Judge has ordered that proposed testing by independent computer scientists proceed - see here. There will also not be a full trial to determine the reliability of the machines until May 19.
There will be a number of states using paperless electronic voting machines in November, including Georgia, Maryland, much of Texas and Pennsylania. New Jersey does not have to be one the unverifiable states. Not when the machines' deficiencies are creating a news buzz, not when there are better voting systems available, and not when the Legislature took action on the problem almost three years ago.