Politics  :  Law   RSS  Get Yer Vote Machines Here  Farhad
Manjoo Email 01.17.01  SACRAMENTO, California -- Mathematically,
an election is a pretty simple process. It's just addition,
really, the kind of thing one learns in first grade.  Or at
least, we all wish it were so easy.  So easy that all voters
would have equal access to polling places, that they would be
sure which candidate they were choosing, that the machines would
properly record their votes, and that, in the end, it would all
boil down to mere counting.  But in practice, the process is
rarely so smooth, say election officials convened here for the
Election Technology Expo, held at the behest of the state's top
voting official, Secretary of State Bill Jones.  As the nation
saw in the last general election, antiquated voting systems can
wreak havoc on the democratic process. Voting machines that are
easily gummed up with chads, systems that don't notify voters
that they've made a mistake, ballot designs that confuse people.
These are the hallmark