The plaintiffs argued that banning the systems would disenfranchise visually or physically impaired voters.
In an order issued by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote that "the evidence does not support the conclusion that the elimination of the DREs would have a discriminatory effect on the visually or manually impaired."
Cooper also said that the secretary of state's "decision to suspend the use of DREs pending improvement in their reliability is certainly a rational one, designed to protect the voting rights of the state's citizens." Cooper noted that Shelley is responsible for ensuring that votes are counted accurately, and requiring a paper audit trail is one way of fulfilling that obligation.
Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the court's decision a "landmark" ruling.
"The court said in clear, unambiguous terms that requiring a paper trail for e-voting machines is consistent with the obligation to assure the accuracy of election results," Cohn said. "That's an enormous victory for secure elections."
The plaintiffs in the case did not respond to calls seeking comment.
State and local elections officials around the country are scrambling to ensure that e-voting systems in different jurisdictions are reliable and can be secured from tampering in time for the November election.
The decision follows the release of a report two weeks ago by an IT security panel that outlined a strategy for certifying the security and reliability of touch-screen DRE voting systems [QuickLink 47931]. The systems will be used in jurisdictions representing about 30% of registered voters in the upcoming presidential election.
Autor: Dan Verton
Quelle: Computerworld, 12.07.2004
