City, county looking at what comes after hanging chads (Chi/Cook Cnty/BBV)

[Bushfire]

October 3, 2003

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

With an eye toward the Florida recount debacle that made hanging and dimpled chads famous, Chicago and Cook County are taking the first steps toward replacing punch-card voting.

On (Thur) Oct. 23 and (Fri) 24, the most sophisticated voting technology will be on display at a public exhibition and demonstration in the grand ballroom of McCormick Place South at a forum underwritten by the election industry and sponsored by the Chicago Board of Election and the Cook County clerk's office. The forum will showcase "every type of election system on the market today -- from optical scan to electronic voting devices, including touch-screen voting stations."

snip

Asked if the exhibition marks the first step toward getting rid of punch cards, city election board spokesman Tom Leach said, "Obviously, it's a step toward that. It's looking to the future. We'd be remiss if we didn't look to the future. And the future is electronic voting."

snip

But, he said: "As a result of 2000 and what happened in Florida, a lot of companies have gotten into the business. Florida converted to touch-screens. So have many other jurisdictions throughout the country. We want to see what's on the marketplace. There may not be anything we like. We may have to customize our own system."

more...

http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-elect03.html

This should be an activism event, and hope we can get some Chicago area DU'ers to hand out some info, and questions those days. Hedda_Foil are you up for organizing it?

[hedda_foil]

1. Okay. I'll get on it.

Generally these things are open to the public. Looks like I'd better bring a group. I should be able to round up a few in Evanston but other Chicago DUers please check in on this thread.

On edit: There's nothing wrong with the Chicago machines. They're ES&S I believe (possibly Diebold) with a card reader that notifies you if you left anything unpunched or double punched and spits it back at you. We're already set up for touch screens for disabled voters in each polling place (one in each) so we're actually fully HAVA compliant right now. So that's not the issue. All the other BBV security issues are still operative, though.

Oh well. Hi Ho off we go!