Big Questions about Black Boxes

Several groups are investigating how electronic voting machines performed during the U.S. elections. Three Democratic Representatives asked the General Accountability Office for "an investigation into irregularities with voting machines," including a memory card reader in Ohio that gave Bush "3,893 more votes than he should have received"; North Carolina e-voting machines that lost 4,500 votes; and Florida machines from ES&S that counted absentee ballots improperly. Although the Information Technology Association of America's president said, "The machines performed beautifully," computer scientist Avi Rubin commented, "We'll never really know if [this election] was actually successful."