NJ residents plan lawsuit to block e-voting

Threatened with a lawsuit to block the use of electronic voting machines, New Jersey's Office of the Attorney General is defending them as secure.

Penny Venetis, a professor with the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers University, plans to file the lawsuit on behalf of several New Jersey residents as early as Tuesday, according to a Clinic spokeswoman. The lawsuit will allege that e-voting machines used in New Jersey aren't secure because they do not include a voter verified paper trail.

Venetis was not immediately available for comment, and more details about the lawsuit weren't available.

Fifteen of New Jersey's 21 counties plan to use direct electronic recording machines (DREs) in the Nov. 2 election, according to Lee Moore, a spokesman for the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. New Jersey plans to use four models of e-voting machines.

The attorney general's office won't comment on the specific lawsuit, Moore said, but he defended New Jersey's DREs. "It's not prudent to pilot new technology in this election," he said of voter verified printed ballots.

The state is open to new technologies in the future, but it's too late to change the voting system for this election, Moore added.

"The counties, by and large, share our confidence ... in the voting technology we have in place now," he said. "Essentially, what we have been saying all along is that New Jersey elections have been historically problem-free."