Five voting integrity groups have sent a letter to presidential candidates urging them to call on states to use paper ballots for the 2008 primary elections.

The groups, among them Iowans for Voting Integrity (whose state holds the first caucus tomorrow), cited a recent report out of Ohio that examined voting machines made by Diebold/Premier, Election Systems & Software and Hart InterCivic and found serious security vulnerabilities – among them a vulnerability in ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machines that would allow someone to manipulate code on the machines via an infrared port. Ohio's secretary of state declared all of the machines unfit and called for paperless machines to be replaced with optical-scan equipment.

The ES&S touch-screen machines are at the center of a controversy involving a 2006 congressional race in Sarasota, Florida, where more than 18,000 ballots cast on the machines showed no vote selected in the 13th congressional district race. Numerous voters in that Sarasota election reported having problems with the machines recognizing their touch or failing to record their vote in the 13th congressional race.

ES&S iVotronic machines have also been implicated in several stories from various states involving vote-flipping. In 2006 during early voting in Miami-Date and Broward counties in Florida, voters complained that they selected one candidate but had the machine record their vote for a different candidate. ES&S officials said the issue was not a problem because voters caught the mistakes on the review screen at the end of the ballot and were able to go back and re-select their candidates. A Broward County election staff member also dismissed the issue, telling a reporter that it was common for a certain percentage of voting machines to have such problems, which he said was a calibration error.

There were similar reports of problems with ES&S machines in Texas and Ohio. In at least one incident in Texas the voter had a poll worker watch as the machine registered his correct vote when he touched the screen, but indicated a vote for a different candidate on the review screen at the end of the ballot.

To view a schedule of the state primaries, go here.

To see which voting equipment is used in each state, go here.

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