Watchdog group spotlights lost votes in electronic machines
By Jenna Portnoy
May 15,2010
OF THE MORNING CALL

It won't matter how much time you spend comparing the records of U.S. Senate candidates Joe Sestak and Arlen Specter if your vote doesn't count Tuesday.

That's the message election watchdogs in Montgomery County hope to get across in a report released this week.

The Election Reform Network found that the number of Montgomery residents who showed up to vote in the 2008 presidential election rarely exactly matched the tally on the electronic voting machines. No one knows what happened to the missing voters.

Election officials generally blame the discrepancy on human error. But others worry the machines could be to blame.

''All you can do is print ballot images churned out by the same software that recorded the vote,'' said Steve Strahs of Melrose Park, who wrote the report. ''You have what amounts to a black box. You can't audit the system, you can't recount the votes.''

He's referring to direct recording electronic machines, or so-called DREs, which are used in about 50 of the state's 67 counties, including Northampton, Lehigh, Bucks and Montgomery.  Read more.

Read The Intelligencer story.