http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aaB4iadjGAC0&refer=u
Bloomberg.com
Paper Makes
a Comeback as Electronic Elections Spur Opposition
April 8
(Bloomberg) -- Meet the next big thing in paperless voting: paper.
Voting-rights
groups and computer scientists, concluding that a tangible record is essential
to any electronic voting system, are persuading a growing number of U.S.
lawmakers and election officials either to reject paperless voting machines or
to require fitting them with costly add-on printers to help verify results.
Even Ohio,
home to Diebold Inc., the world's leading maker of paperless machines, plans to
spend $106 million in federal funds exclusively on optical-scan systems that
require voters to mark their choice on a paper ballot.
After two
tight presidential elections in a row, each producing complaints about voting
machinery, proponents say a paper trail is the only way to convince voters that
elections are safeguarded from technological defect or high-tech fraud.
``It's not
sufficient for elections to be accurate,'' said David Dill, a professor of
computer science at Stanford University and founder of VerifiedVoting.org,
which advocates paper-trail laws. ``People have to know they are accurate.''
So far, 12 states
require a vote-by-vote paper trail, half of them as a result of laws passed in
the last year. Similar bills are pending in about 20 other state legislatures,
and five bills introduced in Congress would require paper trails in all states,
according to electionline.org, a non-partisan Washington- based clearinghouse
on election reform.
At stake are
hundreds of millions of dollars in federal, state and local purchases of new
voting equipment. The purchases are being spurred by the Help America Vote Act,
passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2002 in the wake
of the disputed 2000 presidential election.
The Battle
of Florida
Bush's
537-vote Florida victory that year over Democrat Al Gore, which gave him the
presidency, came after protests and legal challenges over the design and
counting of punch-card ballots. The election pointed up weaknesses in the
nation's hodge- podge system of paper ballots, punch-card voting machines and
other mechanisms for recording ballots.
Under the
2002 law, 30 states are sharing $300 million in federal aid to replace old
punch-card and mechanical-lever machines in time for next year's congressional
elections. An additional $1.7 billion has gone to all 50 states to meet other
requirements, including one that each polling place have at least one machine
that lets disabled voters cast ballots independently and privately.
Paperless
machines -- known as direct recording electronic machines, or DREs -- capture
votes electronically rather than relying on a paper ballot. Voters enter their
selections by pressing buttons on or near an electronic screen. Their main
competition is optical scanners: Voters make their selection on a paper ballot,
which is then fed into a computerized reader. The paper ballot can be stored
for use in a recount, if needed.
Complicating
Efforts
The trend
toward paper has complicated the work of some election officials. Counties that
moved swiftly to embrace paperless machines now find themselves out of
compliance with new state laws requiring paper trails. Two Ohio counties, for
instance, are suing the state to defend their paperless machines.
Advocates
for disabled voters also are unhappy, saying the emphasis on paper ballots
undermines efforts to let people with visual, physical and other disabilities
vote without assistance. Voters with disabilities now often need help from poll
workers, so their choices aren't secret.
Jim Dickson,
director of the Disability Vote Project at the Washington-based American
Association of People with Disabilities, said only paperless touch-screen
machines can fulfill the 2002 law's requirement that all voters be allowed to
cast ballots ``in a private and independent manner.'' Allegations that
electronic elections are especially prone to fraud constitute ``a Y2k scare all
over again,'' Dickson said.
Optional
Equipment
Responding
to the increasing demand for paper trails, three leading manufacturers of DREs
now offer printers as an optional add-on to new or existing machines. The printers
create a running vote-by-vote record that the electronic tally can be checked
against. Alfie Charles, vice president for business development at Sequoia
Voting Systems Inc., said a printer attachment adds about $1,000 to the cost of
his company's machines, which is typically $3,000 to $3,500.
While such
printers ``are not an essential component of an accurate and reliable election,
they do add value for voter confidence and an additional layer of security,''
Charles said. Sequoia, which was acquired March 9 by Smartmatic Corp. of Boca
Raton, Florida, pioneered paper-trail-enabled touch-screen machines by
providing 2,000 of them to Nevada under a $9 million contract awarded in 2003.
Computer
Memory
A problem
with electronic voting in Carteret County, North Carolina, last November lent
momentum to those pushing a paper trail. A touch-screen machine ran out of
computer memory before the polls closed, causing 4,438 votes to be lost.
Jack Gerbel,
president of the company that made the machine, Unilect Corp. of Dublin,
California, said a setting in its computer should have been adjusted more than
three years earlier. It's unclear whether the county or the company was at
fault, he said.
The Carteret
glitch, though accidental, provided fuel for critics of electronic elections
such as Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore.
``If you
don't have the paper trail, it's impossible to detect whether the machines are
rigged,'' said Rubin, who is studying whether hackers might hide ``malicious
code'' in machines to fix an election.
Security
Rubin
co-wrote a 2003 report that questioned the security of computer code used by
Diebold, the North Canton, Ohio, company that bills itself as ``the world
leader in electronic voting equipment.''
Though
Diebold contested the findings, a year later it agreed to pay California $2.6
million to settle a lawsuit charging that the company falsely claimed its
machines weren't vulnerable to tampering.
David Bear,
a spokesman for Diebold, said the company never opposed adding paper-ballot
verification to its touch-screen machines. ``The reason nobody provided it
before was nobody thought of it before,'' he said. Paperless machines have been
used in hundreds of elections ``and always performed well,'' he said.
Diebold drew
criticism from Democrats during the most recent presidential campaign after its
chief executive, Walden O'Dell, sent a fundraising letter in 2003 that said he
was ``committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes'' to Bush. O'Dell
later said he regretted that remark. Shares of Diebold, which is also the
world's second-largest seller of automated teller machines, have risen 3.3
percent this year and gained $1.40 to $57.58 yesterday.
Speedier
Tally
Hesitancy to
go paperless is boosting optical-scan machines, which became widely used in the
1970s to speed ballot counting. Many states and counties ``are looking toward
the optical scanners as a fallback,'' said Kimball Brace, president of Election
Data Services, a Washington consulting firm.
Dill said
optical scanners are the best current option because they have a built-in paper
trail, have been used and studied more than touch-screens and are cheaper.
In Ohio,
where 71 of 88 counties use punch-card or mechanical lever machines, a 2003
state plan said officials would be allowed to buy either DREs or optical
scanners.
Ohio's
Orders
After state
law mandated a paper trail, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell said in
January that counties may purchase only optical-scan machines made by Diebold
or Election Systems & Software Inc. of Omaha, Nebraska.
Three Ohio
counties went to court to challenge Blackwell's decision. Two of them, Franklin
and Lake, already use paperless electronic machines.
In Georgia
and Maryland, where officials made statewide purchases of Diebold touch-screen
machines, critics continue to fight paperless voting. Bills to require a paper
trail are pending in both state legislatures.
Cathy Cox,
Georgia's secretary of state, has staunchly defended the state's decision. In a
March 10 newspaper column, she wrote, ``Our touch-screen voting system is
dramatically more accurate than the antiquated systems that preceded it.''
To contact
the reporter on this story:
Laurence
Arnold in Washington at
larnold4@bloomberg.net
To contact
the editor responsible for this story:
Joe Winski
at jwinski@bloomberg.net
Last
Updated: April 8, 2005 00:14 EDT
©2005
Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved.
FAIR USE
NOTICE
This site
contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our
efforts to advance understanding of political, democracy, scientific, and
social justice issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For
more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you
wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that
go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.