African Americans, Voting Machines, and Spoiled Ballots A Challenge to Election Reform Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, 9/15/2004 Download in PDF format In the wake of the 2000 presidential election debacle, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act to help prevent a replay of the Florida punch card–counting embarrassment that left many Americans wondering about the reliability of our voting system. The legislation requires that states employ voting systems that include features designed to minimize the number of uncounted (“spoiled”) ballots. It also provides funding for states to replace punch-card and lever machines, systems shown to be particularly prone to high rates of ballot spoilage. But many states' failure to implement these measures threatens to undercut the reliability of the 2004 election results for a variety of reasons, one of which has received far too little attention: African-American votes disproportionately go uncounted when punch-card and, to some extent, “central count” optical-scan machines are used. Edition: Online    Pages: 15    Price: Free Ordering Information: The Century Foundation

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