The following guest entry was written by Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project.
Tuesday had the potential to be a very shaky day for American democracy. Electronic voting had been subjected to a lot of well deserved criticism. E-voting was simply not ready for prime time. The votes are unverifiable and in, most cases, the proprietary software that runs the systems is neither subjected to independent review or open to examination. Both fraud and mistake were possible and were hard to detect.
But e-voting should not be our only concern. Millions of American were expected to be disenfranchised by onerous ID requirements -- both real and phony. They were improperly purged from the voting rolls. Countless numbers of legitimate voters were forced to cast “provisional ballots” that will never be counted.
To make things worse, many more were shut out by election equipment that is not accessible to persons with disabilities. It is time to reexamine and reform American election systems to make good on the promise of democracy.
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