As Election Day 2004 approached - bringing with it the likelihood of another closely-contested Presidential vote - concerns began to emerge around the Nation regarding the readiness of the electoral system to handle the vote and avoid the uncertainty and controversy that followed the 2000 election. With that perspective, my colleagues and I at election-line.org identified several issues that we thought were most likely to have significant impact on the success or failure of Election Day 2004. One of the key issues we focused on was voting technology, and with good reason: the big (if not dominant) election reform story of 2004 was the emerging concern in many quarters of new voting machines, particularly direct recording electronic ("DRE") machines, known more commonly as touch-screen machines. Mistrust of the technology - and suspicion of the partisan loyalties of DRE vendors - led many critics to demand a paper audit trail for such machines.
展开▼
