E-Voting Passed The Test, But Remains ControversialE-Voting Passed The Test, But Remains Controversial

Supporters of electronic voting have four words for the technology's detractors: "I told you so." But opponents said the performance of the touch-screen machines on Election Day did little to settle their concerns.

Both sides acknowledged Wednesday that voters experienced relatively few problems in using the machines. While exact figures were unavailable, The Associated Press reported that there were hundreds of complaints about the machines, which were used in 29 states and the District of Columbia.

That number, however, was tiny in comparison to the 114.9 million people who voted with 99 percent of the precincts reported, according to tabulations by the AP, which said the final tally would probably be higher. President Bush won re-election.

"You had 40 million people voting on 175,000 machines, yet the problems reported were extremely minimal," said Bob Cohen, senior vice president of the Information Technology Association of America, an industry group based in Arlington, Va., that has led the charge for e-voting.

While conceding that there weren't a lot of problems related to voters using the machines, Matt Zimmerman, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said the group maintains its position that the machines have serious shortcomings.

The nonprofit group, which focuses on protecting civil rights in the use of technology, believes only the machines used in Nevada had a "verifiable audit trail," meaning voters could get a print out of their selections to ensure that the machine recorded the right information, Zimmerman said.

"There's no way to independently audit or verify the results produced by the machines," Zimmerman said. "That's been the concern of computer scientists and activists since day one."

Failing to independently verify the machines' work means election results could be tainted by a software failure or hacker, without election officials ever noticing, Zimmerman said.

Cohen, however, argued that "there's no documented case of any tampering of election results with these systems, and the charge that security breaches are possible are just a hypothetical kind of situation."

Cohen believes the machines used Tuesday went a long way towards reducing the 2 million votes that the industry group claims have been lost in each of the last four presidential elections, due to problems with older voting systems.

"At the end of the day, (Tuesday) showed that the equipment worked well, and American voters should be confident," Cohen said.

That, however, didn't appear to be the case in New Orleans, where e-voting took its worst hit on Election Day, the AP reported. Precinct workers there had to tell voters to come back later after machines experienced problems.

In Florida, where nearly half the voters use the machines, 10 of the devices failed in precincts in Broward County, the wire service reported.