By: Imagine an upgrade that calls for untrained people with inadequate leadership to roll out a critical new technology under crushing deadlines. Then they must perform the upgrade under intense public scrutiny and cut the already-short timeline for completion in half while fostering ever-growing expectations for the project's impact.
The truth is, you don't even need to imagine it: This is the actual scenario that has led to one of the most criticized IT projects in recent history - the adoption of electronic voting systems in the United States.
As voters head to the polls on Nov. 7 - one-third of them voting on new e-voting machines for the first time - the story of the U.S. e-voting upgrade is long and littered with stories of failed careers, wasted money and abandoned equipment. The biggest wasted asset has been time, as many e-voting projects that were supposed to have been completed by now remain unfinished.
The U.S. Congress decided to embrace e-voting after the 2000 election, when presidential recounts kept the election in doubt for weeks before eventually being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: No-Confidence Vote
