No Recount: York County, PA candidate trusts accuracy of electronic voting machines

Check out this story from the York County (PA) Daily Record for an example of how the myth of electronic voting accuracy can be used to discourage a candidate from asking for a recount. Republican Larry Homsher lost by only 9 votes in a primary race for state representative. He told the newspaper that if the county was still using lever-operated machines, he would have asked for the recount. Then he got hit with the myth: "But Homsher said he met with county elections director John Scott. And he walked away convinced that the voting office's procedures, combined with the accuracy of the computerized voting machines that made their debut in York county this month, were efficent enough to ensure an accurate result - even down to the single digit margin."

York County uses the Sequoia AVC Edge touch screen electronic voting machine. Voter's Unite provides a partial list of docmented failures of that technology. Let's hope for York County that the alleged winner of the primary, Karen Emenheiser, is more adept at doing homework than Mr. Homsher.

I purposely said "alleged winner;" as long as electronic voting remains open to software manipulation, and as long as voter verified paper audit trail requirements for these machines remain inadequate, it is impossible to have complete trust in the outcome of elections using the technology.