Dr. Duncan Buell believes the voting system in South Carolina needs to be changed. Dr. Buell recently looked into data from the primaries and general election in 2018 for a League of Women Voters of South Carolina report. “We have an extremely complicated system,” he said. Dr. Buell said there were instances where votes were miscounted or counted twice. He said most of the problems come from the election system itself. “The system doesn’t have enough built into it,” he said.
South Carolina is one of five states in the country using a Direct Record Electronic (DRE) system. The state has been using iVotronic machines since about 2004. Lawmakers, the State Election Commission (SEC), and Dr. Buell said its time for a change. The fact there is no paper trail is the main cause for concern.
“The votes should be cast as intended and counted as cast. In an all-electronic system, we have no way of determining if the votes have been cast as intended,” Dr. Buell said.
The SEC said all problems uncovered in the report resulted from human error in the preparation or use of the voting system. It wasn’t always necessarily the software.
Full Article: Replacing South Carolina’s aging voting system.