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Hundreds of thousands join "Computer Ate My Vote" protest
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Rallies were being held in 24 US cities and hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions to protest the use of what critics call "unverified" computer voting machines in the November presidential election.
The "Computer Ate My Vote" day of protest culminates a movement of activists from the tech sector and various political organizations to seek to halt the use of touch-screen or other electronic voting machines with a "paper trail" that can be audited or recounted.
"We have more than 300,000 signatures" for petitions to be delivered to election officials in 19 states calling for a verified audit system or "paper trail" if electronic balloting is used, said Will Doherty, executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation in San Francisco.
Doherty said a coalition supporting the effort includes organizations with with some three million people across the political spectrum.
While some critics of e-voting are also opponents of President George W. Bush (news - web sites), Doherty said the movement is "completely non-partisan."
"There are as many Republicans as Democrats who want to see votes counted accurately," he said.
"There is a grassroots movement for election integrity and some reasonable security in voting."
While manufacturers of the electronic vote machines insist they are more reliable than other systems, a series of glitches and errors involving e-voting has led to protests and legal action seeking safeguards.
About 20 percent of US voters have used new touch-screen or other electronic machines, according to the Information Technology Association of America and some estimates indicate that as many as 50 million may be using the new technology in the November election.
The technology upgrade is in part a response to the 2000 presidential election debacle in which a lengthy legal challenge over the counting of punch cards with partially removed "chads" (pieces of paper punched out mechanically to vote) in Florida delayed the final count.
But California election officials have banned the use of some electronic machines without a verifiable paper trail. A court ruling has upheld that ban, but an appeal is pending.
Doherty said the movement has made progress elsewhere, with the state of Nevada becoming the first with all-electronic machines including a paper trail.
In Ohio, he noted that 28 of 31 counties considering paperless e-voting rejected the option.
The petitions urge state election officials to sign a "Pledge of Ballot Integrity," committing to requiring computerized voting machines to produce paper records.
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