Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post
September 18, 2008
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Faced with a surge in voter registrations leading up to Nov. 4, election officials across the country are bracing for long lines, equipment failures and confusion over polling procedures that could cost thousands the chance to cast a ballot.
The crush of voters will strain a system already in the midst of transformation, with jurisdictions introducing new machines and rules to avoid the catastrophe of the deadlocked 2000 election and the lingering controversy over the 2004 outcome. Even within the past few months, cities and counties have revamped their processes: Nine million voters, including many in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida and Colorado, will use equipment that has changed since March.
But the widespread changes meant to reassure the public have also increased the potential for trouble.
“You change systems and throw in lots of new voters, and you can plan to be up the proverbial creek,” said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a consulting firm that has tracked the voting changes.
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September 19th, 2008 at 4:10 am
Since the invention of the microprocessor, the cost of moving a byte of information around has fallen on the order of 10-million-fold. Never before in the human history has any product or service gotten 10 million times cheaper–much less in the course of a couple decades. That’s as if a 747 plane, once at $150 million a piece, could now be bought for about the price of a large pizza.MichaelRothschildMichael Rothschild, author of Bionomics, Economy as Ecosystem