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Voting tech isn’t perfect, but so far it’s holding up
It’s a big day for democracy’s IT department.
That includes spotty Wi-Fi connections impacting electronic poll books used to check voters in more efficiently, imprecise calibration on voting machine touchscreens, and ballot scanners that are down. Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told reporters during a virtual briefing on Tuesday afternoon that while “there have been some isolated incidents ... for the most part, people are arriving at the polling locations today, they’re checking in with poll workers, and they’re able to cast their ballots.” Hewitt said that’s particularly “remarkable” in light of the rampant spread of election mis- and disinformation and litigation around efforts to restrict certain voters’ access. But Smith says there are pretty mundane explanations: it can happen when the machine is not properly calibrated or when a voter presses the screen in an ambiguous spot or accidentally touches it somewhere they don’t intend to.
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