California's Voting Systems Panel has just voted unanimously that the Diebold TSx paperless electronic voting system be decertified for use in California. Although the final decision is up to California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, he is expected to follow the recommendation of the board before April 30, 2004.Full story available from verifiedvoting.org.The Voting Systems Panel did not recommend against continued use of the Diebold TS electronic voting machines or use of optical-scan voting machines. The GEMs software is also not affected by this decision.
This is good news, but does not (yet) go far enough: the TS machines must work correctly and the GEMS centralized vote-couting software must count properly if the overall election is to be accurate. Either (much!) tougher standards (the current standards are, according to Diebold's lawyers, unenforceable) or else mandatory voter-verified ballots (and spot checks) are needed, in California and the nation at large.