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USAToday ...Despite widespread public skepticism about the new technology — a recent Princeton study claims the touch-screen machines can be easily hacked — elections experts agree that the bigger problems are caused by people.
They start with Congress, which imposed deadlines under the 2002 Help America Vote Act that have proved difficult to meet. Then there are state officials, such as Ohio's General Assembly, which imposed a rash of new voter registration and identification requirements after the May primary. Judges haven't helped by tossing out some of those laws and keeping others.
'Who counts the paper trail?'
And then there are the 1.2 million poll workers assigned to handle the new machines and interpret the new laws. Tom Hayes, who left his job as director of Ohio's Lottery Commission to help manage Cuyahoga's fall elections, says the mix of new technology and old bureaucracy can be brutal.
That worries Jane Platten, who runs Cuyahoga's poll worker training and voter education programs. The walls of her office are adorned with huge sheets of paper listing "Items of Concern." Topping her list: getting thousands more people through training, because nearly 30% have been failing. Two-thirds of them are brand new to the process. With time running out, classes are likely to continue right up until Election Day.
The job of a poll worker "used to be, 'Hi, my name is Jane Doe, and I'm here to vote,' " Platten says. Now the workers face "an electronic voting world" and rules so complicated, "you almost have to be a rocket scientist."
