The Economist in an
opinion column writes:
it is quite possible that America's mid-term elections on November 7th will produce a close result, not just in the House of Representatives, where it has long been predicted, but in the Senate too. At which point things could get fraught.
The problem is voting machines.
The Economist is not the best on technology, but is a conservative, pro-business magazine, not given to conspiracy theories, and the article is very carefully written.
I expect to see more articles like in the future, describing, very carefully, the complete mess that the United States voting system finds itself in.
While the article does not point fingers about the problems, it is direct, admirably so, about the (OBVIOUS!) solution -- optical scan voting machines:
How could this have happened? Mainly because lots of states and counties went for touch-screen devices, very like ATMs, instead of a much better alternative, optical scanners that count votes marked by hand on paper ballots, rather like lottery forms or multiple-choice exam papers. The good thing about scanners is that the original ballot is by definition available for re-counting. With touch-screens, it isn't. Fortunately, more than half of America's 3,000-odd counties have opted for scanners. But about a third have chosen the touch-screens.